
YouTube marketing horror story - bemmu
https://www.candyjapan.com/behind-the-scenes/youtube-marketing-horror-story
======
manigandham
This is because there is no process. Marketing (and advertising) is not an
art. You need to know what your product is, who the buyer is, and the most
efficient way to connect them together.

Less than 3,000 views across tiny channels with seemingly random creators,
topics and locations? This is a waste of time and money.

Figure out who the buyer is first. Clearly there must be a certain disposable
income level. What region buys the most? The USA? Europe? Asia? What are your
customers interested in? Is it about Japan, or is it candy? Is it novelty
gifts? Is it seasonal? Are there tie-ins to anime or music or some other
Japanese export or culture? How big can the market even get and how do you
know if you've hit saturation? These things need to be answered so you have a
grid of interests and can focus on the most relevant audience.

Once you have that, _only then_ can you actually come up with a plan to best
reach them. Don't just send things out without a target audience. The
advertising channel you pick (whether Youtube or not) is a function of your
message, and almost every "viral" hit is either a game of chance (which you
will lose) or much more orchestrated than you know. 99% of influencer
marketing is useless and you do not have anywhere near the scale to break
through it by force.

At the very least, try and talk to some (consumer product) marketers, there's
plenty of advice you can get by just asking nicely, or even pay for a small
strategy session. That will have far better ROI than this.

~~~
sizzle
What are your thoughts on them getting featured on a relevant Instagram page
with high subscriber count.

What about trying to get to the top YouTube SEO for search terms, "candy [...]
Japan”, since his company is literally called that. If this feasible for a
small budget?

I'm curious what it would take to pull off. Great insight, thanks for sharing.

~~~
Regardsyjc
Just because an IG has a high number of followers doesn't mean anything. I'm
not an IG marketer, but there are metrics that you can check like engagement
rates and even those can be faked.

I only specialize in Amazon marketing but if my process is applicable to
Adwords/Facebook, the startup method would be small tests with tiny budgets.
If the article writer had made a video ad or just used one of these unboxing
videos and tested it on Facebook, he would have gotten immediate actionable
data.

He should have a Facebook pixel installed on his website and should have
collected data on traffic as well as information on those who converted. Turn
the data that you have to work for you. In Facebook ads, you can create custom
audiences based on value. In marketing, there are ideas of superconsumers or
customer segmentation. Who are your best customers? Why? You don't have to
reinvent the wheel if you already have data. Just look at the data that you
have.

You can put the data you have to work on Facebook. If you don't understand
your customer market but have existing customers, lucky for you, Facebook can
tell you and help you find more of them via lookalike audiences.

If you don't have any existing data and you are starting from scratch, then
you can create audiences on Facebook ads and test them. Or better, ID your
competitors and analyze or target their customers. I'm not a pro at Fb ads so
this might be outdated but the idea I'm familiar with is testing $5/day ads.
$5 day ad will give you a lot of data on impressions, CTRs, CPC or impression,
conversion, engagement, etc. So you can easily test multiple audiences or ads
and get data and numbers. Once you crack the magical formula where your ad is
successful and all the numbers add up (customer acquisition cost), you light
the ad on fire by boosting the budget and scaling it. The explosive growth
part. That's what I do for my Amazon clients. I ID the best strategy to
success, find the magic formula by making sure all the numbers add up to their
goal, and then when I find it, I pour gasoline on it and dance around the
flames as the money rolls in.

That's the basic idea for Amazon ads and maybe Facebook ads. But I know
Facebook ads are amazing because there are so many tips, tricks, tools,
strategies you can implement. For example starting with a video, getting
engagement first, then creating a new audience based on those who watched the
video the longest, etc. I have also heard that Google Adwords has way more
bells and whistles than Amazon ads too.

Other people mentioned some of his mistakes, another mistake he made was not
having a brief and agreement. Influencer marketing is a lot more complicated
than here's my product, please make a post or video about it. Most people
include a brief for what exactly needs to be in their post or video. A special
format with guidelines on style. Key points that need to be made, time line,
etc.

~~~
sizzle
As someone who knows little about marketing, thanks for sharing your process
and insights. This is a really fascinating field and I can see why it is so
valuable to invest in upfront for the success and growth of your business.

------
orliesaurus
I think the approach he took was too naive. I went to a meetup about "YouTube
influencers" a few months ago who explained just this; there are companies
whose sole purpose is to "vet" YouTubers and find you the right influencer for
your product. They do all the heavy lifting for you, there's one pretty big
one here locally called RoosterTeeth (yep they do influencer marketing
nowadays amongst other stuff, if you watch h3h3 on YT they worked with him
number of times).

The article was interesting nonethelss: the writer was transparent and laying
down his assumptions and how they carried out the work AND the process.
Executing a thing like this might be trivial but it requires a lot of annoying
work, I know this by experience: even for simply sending a t-shirt to a
customer (which is a simpler item is a pain).

Nowadays luckily you can send t-shirts or other apparel with a single click
directly from the company that produces the item (there are a couple of names
out there who will do that). BUT if you've got custom items or boxes of items
(like in this scenario) you have to think about packaging, costs and the
"unboxing experience", that last one is critical.

Unboxing experience can make or break the whole video.

I feel bad for the author who did so much work (180 attempts!?!) to get 17
videos and 0 sales and I suggest next time he goes to these specialists if
he's really committed in using YT as a marketing chanenl.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Am I the only one that reads this and thinks how the future has become stupid?

The term “influencer” is such an eye roll to me.

~~~
always_good
Then what's a better word for it?

They aren't celebrities. They aren't just people with a following or a popular
channel. They are specifically people with a following that are successful at
converting sales.

Unless you have something interesting to say on the matter, I don't think this
forum needs more "le wrong generation"[0] posts.

[0]:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/](https://old.reddit.com/r/lewronggeneration/)

~~~
manigandham
Artists, creators, chefs, bloggers, travel junkies, etc. Whatever it is that
they actually _do_.

You do not just become an "influencer", instead you gain influence by way of
gaining a following for doing (and being good at) something. The term is
definitely overloaded and mostly pointless now.

------
CPLX
This is nuts, he's still making the same obvious mistake.

Previous:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16461187)

Relevant comment from that discussion:

 _" You targeted hardcore gamers, but you're not selling games. That's almost
a complete non-sequitur. Your goal was to target people likely to purchase
candy, or perhaps Japanese novelty items, via a mail subscription service. It
doesn't appear that you made much effort if any to figure out what that
audience looks like and how to reach it."_

It doesn't seem like much has changed, he's just hellbent on putting effort
into advertising campaigns without first figuring out who the actual target
audience is that might reasonably complete a purchase, and what the product's
best sales message is.

I mean, have you considered the possibility that people who make cosplay
videos and the people who watch them mostly care about _wearing costumes_ as
their hobby, and that you might try targeting people who make videos about
either _various types of candy_ or _various types of Japanese products_
because that's actually what your business sells?

~~~
Cenk
Almost as if getting on the front page of HN with a story of a failed
advertising method is it’s own sort of advertising

~~~
CPLX
I think you’re probably right about that. But I bet he’d get just as much HN
status and exposure with a post about how he figured it all out and nailed his
ad strategy, so not sure that explains he whole story.

~~~
Natsu
Well, they just got free marketing advice, so they can take that advice,
succeed, and write another post on lessons learned for HN :)

------
forkLding
I've experimented with influencer marketing before, mainly with Instagram
Influencers for app downloads who would post a video I made for the app on
their Instagram Stories, although the experience doesn't reflect paid candy
subscriptions so it might not be as useful, this was also a small app I made
on the side. I do remember getting 300 downloads from one influencer and the
rest was negligible.

I figured out it was much easier to use young affluent females influencers
from ages 18-25 who had 10000-15000 followers (not too much, as that dilutes
the network and those who had too many followers were too expensive anyway) as
they're usually super-connected in their network, "popular" and their
followers (usually their friends, etc.) trust their opinions.

Interestingly, I didn't need to pay anything even though I didn't know these
people, most were happy to just do it.

With Youtube, it would seem that only the big-name You-tubers are worth any
kind of sponsorship. I find that influencer marketing is really about trust
and credibility as your customer sales really come from trusting the
influencer promoting the product and in turn also meeting that need the
customer wanted too.

~~~
KajMagnus
Would you like to link to the video?

> _I didn 't need to pay anything even though I didn't know these people, most
> were happy to just do it._

Maybe they liked the video and/or the app itself, and that's why they wanted
to show it to their followers? So I'm a bit curious about the video, maybe one
can learn something from watching it (?).

~~~
forkLding
This was a year ago, I can't find the video I used, it was also max 5-10
seconds. I remember I did the video by recording powerpoint slides, so I used
phone or screen recording to record and then each slide of the powerpoint
would move to the next one when I clicked or wanted animations. The powerpoint
slides had pictures and texts. It was very amateur.

This was the app, I'm in Canada: [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/lucid-see-
who-likes-you/id12...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/lucid-see-who-likes-
you/id1219887468?mt=8)

I contacted them through Instagram and explained my app and asked if they
wanted to post the video for me. Some said yes. Some didn't. I think I also
framed it as marketing experience for them too but I'm not too sure what I
said exactly, I didn't really have any money at the time. Also some were
friends of friends of friends and it wasn't as strange in asking them to post
but I still didn't know these people.

I'm not as focussed on the app anymore and sometimes maintain it, I keep it
more as a side project link for my resume.

Overall, you just need to be brave enough to message them, I was a bit shy and
unsure at first and then afterwards I got used to it because it's easier to
communicate online and it was the cheapest alternative I could think of.

~~~
KajMagnus
Ok, thanks for the info :- ) I imagine they might have thought the app was a
bit cool — to me, "anonymous chat with friends" sounds like something I'd be
curious about trying out. Maybe one would get to hear some of one's friends
private thoughts, which they now could share, when being anonymous? And maybe
they wouldn't say weird and rude things (like often happens in anonymous
forums, right) because they were one's friends? — So I slightly suspect the
ones you reached out to, wanted to be the first ones, to tell their friends
about this new and maybe cool thing.

~~~
forkLding
Yea I based it on the popular and on the rise apps on the appstore which were
like anon chat or live video chatting with strangers. Not sure why but they
all have millions of downloads and they aren't reported as much in the media.

------
inflooence
The only people willing to do an entire video for a free sample are people
without a monetisable audience. The only people willing to do a video for free
are people who are most interested in receiving free stuff. The key to
influencer marketing is in the name. You must identify people who can
influence your market, your goal is to use _their_ brand to add value to
yours. Nike don't sponsor people who play for their local pub football team,
they sponsor word class players.

I'm sure you'll find that almost every one of the YouTubers chosen for this
experiment are churning out video after video of candy box samples they've
received to an audience of nobody.

~~~
ggggtez
Nike sponsors plenty of unknown clubs. [https://www.nike.com/help/a/nikeinc-
donation](https://www.nike.com/help/a/nikeinc-donation)

~~~
manigandham
This is public good/PR policy ventures, not actually marketing driven.

------
gus_massa
> _I also found that international package tracking often (24% of the time)
> does not actually work, so it was impossible to be sure exactly how many
> packages got delivered. I know for sure that 4 got returned back to me, and
> that at least 33 arrived._

I think this part is weird, since the main part of his business is shipping
packages internationally. Does the list of youtubers include too many from
unusual countries?

~~~
bemmu
Here is one example of a case where tracking even to Florida just mysteriously
stopped working:
[https://trackings.post.japanpost.jp/services/srv/search/dire...](https://trackings.post.japanpost.jp/services/srv/search/direct?locale=en&reqCodeNo1=RR843939619JP)

"Item out for physical delivery" and then... nothing. Usually it should show
"delivered" at the end.

Some countries were unusual such as Bahrain, but then the same thing would
sometimes happen even for Canada or Norway.

~~~
robryan
Sometimes the local postal service tracking will give additional information
that the source tracking doesn’t give.

In the case above I would expect they they just didn’t scan it when
delivering. We get cases with USPS, usually with appartment buildings that
they will leave packages in common spaces and they will be stolen. Although
that would usually have a delivery scan.

~~~
stordoff
USPS doesn't tell you much more in this case. It just ends at:

> August 20, 2018, 10:44 pm > Awaiting Delivery Scan > The delivery status of
> your item has not been updated as of August 20, 2018, 10:44 pm. We apologize
> that it may arrive later than expected.

------
sfifs
As a marketing analytics & research person, I think the biggest issue here is
that the WHY of choosing to reach out to cosplay YouTubers isn't clear. Why
would people watching cosplay videos like to order candy from Japan? As
opposed to say people who show food recipes from other cultures etc. In this
kind of marketing (basically word of mouth on steroids), the context and
content I have observed from watching brands really take off are much much
more important than the mechanics.

~~~
gray_-_wolf
I think the reasoning could be that most people who like cosplay have at least
some interest in Japan.. which sounds like something I would expect to be
true.

~~~
sfifs
Yes. However the business objective isn't finding people with interest in
Japan. The objective is to reach people who would likely be interested in
buying exotic candy. The further removed from your objective the marketing
vehicle is, the exponentially higher the likelihood that the marketing
campaign will fail. While I suppose Bemmu hasn't really been a marketer
before, I see even "professionals" making errors like this all the times in
search of chimera like "engagement" rather than linking marketing strategy and
execution directly to the business objective.

~~~
rossdavidh
buying exotic candy...from Japan. Having known a few people who are into
manga, not even cosplay, they often find oddball Japanese candy interesting.
Maybe not enough to buy because of an unboxing video, though.

------
kyleperik
Honestly I don't think marketing is a problem. In fact I have already heard of
this. I think it's a super cool idea. But there's no way I can justify to
myself, much less my wife to carve out $30 of my budget for candy every month.
That's half our food budget. That's coming from someone who loves candy
probably a bit more than average.

~~~
sbierwagen
Where do you live that you spend sixty dollars a month on food?

~~~
iagovar
That may be possible in Spain or Portugal, but you have to be very frugal.

~~~
pakitan
You can do it anywhere if you're frugal and willing to cook. One side effect
of globalization is that food staples prices are pretty much the same over the
world. I'm not saying it will necessarily be a healthy diet and $1/day per
person is definitely pushing it but I'm pretty sure you can do it in a country
like USA too.

~~~
kyleperik
I live in the USA

Have you tried roasted a chicken? A whole chicken costs $6. Feeds 2 with
leftovers, the bones can be used for broth, which can make lots of things,
especially soup. The leftover meat is great for many things, like fried with
potatoes. Sometimes I find that the chicken was used for 10 meals. Of course
other things are added along the way, but veggies are dirt cheap.

~~~
pakitan
> A whole chicken costs $6

That means you blew your 3-day food budget on half a chicken. That's just not
nearly enough calories for 3 days. I'm not doubting you're able to afford
chicken on that tight budget, it just seems that you're using it more like a
condiment, rather than food.

~~~
delinka
You don't get all your calories from the chicken. And yes, it's more like
flavoring. You round out the meal on veggies and maybe some simple carbs. The
US fascination with a protein-heavy diet is, uh, fascinating.

~~~
pakitan
I'm not from US, I didn't imply that he must get all his calories from chicken
and I'm not the one who brought up the chicken in the first place. He seemed
to imply that chicken is a significant part of this diet and it simply isn't
possible on such a budget. That was my point.

------
rossdavidh
I see a lot of criticism of his particular angle of attack, but not much
consideration of another possibility: YouTube ads may just not work very well.
Maybe most ads don't really work very well. Maybe the vast majority of the
money spent on advertising has been, in fact, wasted, and as we get better and
better at tracking the results, we get better and better visibility on the
fact that advertising just doesn't work very well.

The problem being that the people who made it their profession, really don't
like that idea, and thus it is not in their interest to see this fact.

~~~
CPLX
Dealing with ads is one of my professions. And I would be the first to admit
that it’s full of waste and fraud and misleading information and people trying
to spin things positive. In many situations, it doesn’t work.

The thing is that often it does work, and this business seems the type that
probably has a least a few moves they could make with positive ROI.

What’s driving everyone nuts is he’s doing all this work and analysis but
seems unwilling to stop making the most obvious basic rookie mistakes.
Repeatedly.

------
Fnoord
Might it be because the competition offers more bang for the buck? I'm not
gonna name the competitors, but back when I looked at it, the competition
offered at least larger quantity for the same price, or the same amount for
much cheaper. They also send the packages once per month instead of twice per
month, leading to less S&H. Whether it is free S&H or not someone's paying for
the S&H; in the end, that someone is the customer.

------
sixQuarks
This is not a horror story at all. It’s simply a marketing lesson. You have to
be willing to test out different things, some work, some don’t, but you learn
something from each one

~~~
bemmu
Right. I tried to playfully use the word "horror" in there to make this fit in
with Halloween. I originally planned to call it "Candy Japan marketing test:
worth asking tiny YouTube channels for unboxings?". I'll add a clarification.

------
paulcole
I am starting to think this guy’s successful marketing strategy is getting
articles about his marketing failures to the front page of HN.

~~~
Scoundreller
Sounds like a fair-trade. Give inside knowledge or interesting material that
you don’t usually get in exchange for exposure.

The same argument can be made for any non-journalist source.

~~~
KaoruAoiShiho
Yeah honestly the comments on this article is useful to me. At the very least
I learned what not to do.

------
SyneRyder
I tried watching some of the 20 videos, and none of them really grabbed me.
But even worse, as I was starting to get bored in the middle of watching one
of them, I noticed in YouTube's Recommended For You column a video for
"[Competitor's] Monthly Subscription Box" that had 100x as many views... and
now I've started going down the rabbit-hole of watching _competitor_ videos
instead.

In particular, this competitor video was just a lot more fun to watch: it's
less about the product, or specifics of the subscription, and more just
enjoying the two friends joking around with each other. And that helps sells
the experience of the product: Buy this box, invite a friend over for the
afternoon, and laugh at each other's awkward faces trying sour candies until
the dog starts coughing and freaks you both out:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwmezY0YZ4&t=7m44s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwmezY0YZ4&t=7m44s)

Or just have a fun afternoon trying to get the damn bottle open:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwmezY0YZ4&t=9m32s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwmezY0YZ4&t=9m32s)

Of course, as much as that video had me laughing out loud & watching to the
end, even that particular competitor video only has 250 views. And maybe you
_don 't_ want videos like that, 'cos those girls really hated half of the
candy the competitor sent to them.

The Candy Japan videos mostly had lower production values than the competitors
ones. The Starbit one looked interesting, but their audio was so quiet &
echoey that I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I did watch all of the
"Sailor Moon & Kids" one
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHF1p3ggq_w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHF1p3ggq_w))
and it was okay, but it kinda looked like the kids weren't enjoying the candy
by the end.

So maybe the channels selected need to be filtered down further based on
quality of production & whether their videos in general are fun enough to be
shareable. Or maybe look at this as having bought $1000 of video recorded
customer experiences & feedback.

------
DoofusOfDeath
Out of curiosity I just went to your website. I was thinking, "Hey, I don't
know much about marketing, but this sounds like a fun product!"

Then I saw $29/month. I make a decent income, but that's just too expensive. I
suspect your problem is less about advertising and more about value.

------
pcurve
There are a lot of things working against his favor, besides the novelty
factor. Many of his copycat competitors also went out of business.

1\. he only offers one pricing option.

2\. go to amazon and search for "japanese candy". You can a lot more for your
money without subscribing.

[https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-assortment-Dagashi-Umaibo-
ch...](https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-assortment-Dagashi-Umaibo-
chocolate/dp/B07B5ZPR22/ref=sr_1_20_a_it?ie=UTF8&qid=1540691462&sr=8-20&keywords=japanese%2Bcandy%2Bchocolate&th=1)

3\. after receiving a few boxes, you will find things you like. How would I
re-order just those items? Amazon.

------
rdiddly
I don't know if you came here for advice, but mine is contained right there in
your own words: _" On a CPM basis this was actually ten times more expensive
than advertising on prime-time TV."_ In all seriousness, why not advertise on
prime-time TV? Seems like Japanese candy might be a minor hit. Downsides I can
see, are that you might be faced with an awkward scaling problem (a nice
problem to have), or that the expense of the ads and the scaling-up might
require taking on investors. And of course it could still flop or underwhelm.
It would be something of a "go big or go home" type move, I suppose.

------
guiomie
I went thru all the 20 videos, the videos have around 20 to 200 views, not
surprised you haven't seen any sales. The creators selected are of "low"
quality.

------
delinka
Not sure these folks are trying hard enough to do things correctly. We
subscribed, enjoyed the product, and after several months suddenly we weren't
receiving boxes. No email, nothing on their site about any problems, so I
email and wait a few days for a reply.

The problem: when a charge to my card was denied, they just canceled my
subscription without notification. A simple (automated) email letting me know
there was a problem would have had me fixing things within a day and they'd
have kept a loyal customer. I did't sign back up because, IIRC, we'd gotten
two shipments in a row that weren't very exciting and I just wasn't motivated
to set it up again.

I feel like there's automation to be had, but they're having none of it.

------
AdmiralAsshat
Suggestion: people know an ad when they see one. Even if someone is subscribed
to a YT channel, they're not gonna sit through a video, "Here watch me unbox
this thing that a not-sponsor sent me!", because it feels like the "content"
is an ad.

You'd probably be better off asking them to give it screen-time in the same
way that podcast advertising currently works, where the host devotes 20 or 30
seconds at the beginning or the end of the show to talk about Sponsor X.

~~~
sfifs
I actually did some qualitative research on this recently. What i found was
that while viewers very much know most stuff is sponsored, they try to assess
signals of authenticity when looking at these

------
zarriak
>This would have been OK if these small channels had such a devoted subscriber
base that each would have resulted in a sale or two, but that did not happen.

What does a devoted subscriber base have to do with purchasing advertised
products?

I also genuinely don't understand why you are spending so much on shipping. I
have to assume that if you offered an option of monthly or every other month
and spent half of the money saved on shipping on more candy that your
customers would prefer it.

------
tokyokawasemi
You might try a "free shipping" coupon code (instead of 10% off), as it helps
a customer overcome some of the anxiety of ordering a box of something all the
way "from Japan".

------
cordite
I get candy from these people on subscription because I found them on HN. But,
it seems like most posts these days that I see on HN are about their own
stupid business mistakes.

------
chrismcb
Ironically this part will probably generate more sales than the original ad.
BUT this part wouldn't have existed without the original experiment.

------
paulpauper
The shipping costs did him in. I'm sure it works better for digital products.

------
davidivadavid
I hate to be that guy, but I've seen this business pop up on HN dozens of
time, and it's still struggling. Time to try a new idea? I guess execution
isn't everything, eh?

It's just a run of the mill monthly box that gives people cavities. Next.

------
pryelluw
In previous threads, I proposed a similar idea to the founder of CandyJapan. I
dont know if he took them as a cue to try out youtube. Either way, this is not
what I originally proposed. This was my last comment in the matter:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015617](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16015617)

Before I continue, its easy to stand here and say "You are doing it wrong".
Please dont confuse this with me being such an asshole.

My goal here is to refine the idea, purpose, and outcome.

Idea

Having people dressed in cosplay review the candy. Possibly an attractive
female.

Purpose

Get people to pay attention and buy some candy.

Outcome

Pay a actor/cosplayer to record videos for your own channel and promote that
on social. Contact other youtubers and have them run your content on their
channel. A cross channel feature, if you will.

Reason is that you control everything. There is little to be lost here,
because your product wont need to be shipped, and the only thing exchanging
hands is money. You also control the narrative and the direction of the leads
to whatever collection method you decide to use.

Lets compare to the approach taken by OP.

Idea

Find a bunch of cosplayer channels. Send them free candy. Get a review.

Purpose

Get subscribers to click through and make some sales.

Outcome

Not all candy got to the channels, reviews were controlled by the channel
owner (big no no unless it is a paid and scripted promotion), and no sales
because you weren't in control of the narrative.

This is more common than youd think because people often think that youtube is
a QVC like experience. People watch and buy. Happens often, but its not the
main driver. Youtube's experience is in the "AS SEEN ON TV" product types. It
is a way to get your offering out there on a platform, get some recognition
and then market with the fact that you have been featured on the platform.
This is why scripted and paid promotions work. You can say "AS SEEN ON
$SOMEONE'S CHANNEL".

Where to go from here? Where would I go from here?

You already invested $1000+ of marketing and got a front page post on HN. Not
a bad deal, but this has no long term value.

Id remove the line that says "Contact me to review my product". The outcome
will be similar.

Then, I'd start looking for writers to produce me some good video scripts
(less than a $100). Make sure the script is about the candy. Not the
cosplayer. The cosplayer is a way to differentiate your content. It is not the
focal point. Have your writers produce content about the actual candy. Think
of Lucky Strike "Its toasted". Tell me how Pocky are made and how delicious
they are. Come up with some ways to rate candy and rate them. So many ideas...

Id look for local cosplayers and record one of them following the scripts.
Better yet, hire an actor and have them dress up. Same outcome.

Next, Id share the initial videos to my current client base. Make sure to let
them know you will be reviewing their favorite candy on the videos. Share the
story of the candy.

Publish it on your own channels. And pay someone to promote it on aggregators.

From there, reach out to influencers and ask how much do they charge by 30
seconds of promotion (important). Most will undercut their own rates by diving
it in 30 second intervals. It also opens up Instagram videos. Then have them
run your content as a feature. They love this kind of stiff because all they
have to do is click publish. Easy money.

Main point is that marketing is not something you let others do for you. You
can let them take control. You meed to live and breathe your own product. Not
the boxes. Or the subscription. But the candy. Your goal is to have people
feel excited about the candy offered in candyjapan. It will eventually force
you to open an online retail store.

As always, this is not an attack. It is an outsiders perspective. From someone
who has been, is, and will continue to be in similar trenches. Feel free to
reach out privately. Best of luck.

PS. You are not in the subscription business. You are in the pleasure
business. Candy is a luxury and a pleasure.

------
lupire
It's not a horror story. It's a guy who has spend many years betting that he
can build a business in candy arbitrage by assuming that basic economies of
scale aren't relevant, but finding that almost no no wants to spend money ship
a single box of candy from Japan.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
He has spent many years _running a successful business_ in candy arbitrage. It
may not be as successful going into the future, but as of the last revenue
report he released, it was a reasonably profitable enterprise.

I have no idea why you're using this spiteful tone for someone openly sharing
his experience as a YouTube marketing newbie. You also seem to be imputing
some views on the author ("assuming that basic economies of scale aren't
relevant") that he has not publicly espoused.

~~~
bemmu
I took it as harsh but probably true. He may be right that I'd be better off
writing software instead.

~~~
malvosenior
Can you put other things in the box besides candy? It's an awesome concept but
I can't eat that much candy every month.

~~~
Drdrdrq
Tea for example?

