The short version? Awesome.
The longer version…
I’ve been a part of creating many things online over the last 12-15 years-brochureware sites, social-based sites, web-based applications, banner ads, email marketing, flash-based sites, even an internet hoax years ago that claimed the National Capital Commission here in Ottawa was going to turn the Rideau Canal (the self-proclaimed world’s longest skating rink) into the the world’s longest water slide. That said, what happened this past week I had never fully experienced.
When we launched Manpacks we got, what we thought was, a fair bit of attention considering we were starting from out of nowhere. There were maybe 2-300 tweets, some good Facebook referral traffic and a handful of unsolicited blog posts – we were incredibly excited and thought “wow, people are really digging this concept” (or in some cases really hating – but that’s an other, entertaining, story).
We’ve only really spent time on our marketing budget, not money. We’re just starting to experiment with banner advertising. All of the posts, tweets, comments, mentions, etc have been completely unsolicited. Now, that’s not to say we didn’t have a strategy or plan, just that the response was completely uncontrolled by us.
The week started on Sunday with a small write-up on Springwise, a site dedicated to emtrepreneurial ideas. There were some tweets as a result, a whole bunch of feedback and some orders. Monday was more of the same until sometime in the early evening when we discovered we were on Reddit, ending up at #4 in the funny section and as high as #31 on the main list. From there things just exploded, we’ve been mentioned on multiple morning radio shows in the US and Canada, on NPR (1:18 in the “Lightning Fill in the Blank” section), on ESPN Radio as well as interviewed by a major publication. There have now been 1000+ tweets about Manpacks on Twitter, our traffic is through the roof and orders are coming faster than we can fill them. There’s more still to this story but I can’t yet actually talk about everything-it’s been incredible.
Now, I’m not naive, I know it’s not going to last, but while it does I’m really enjoying having created something that solicits a response in people, whether it’s good or bad, funny or otherwise, and that some have believed enough in it to purchase subscriptions – at a rate much faster than we’d initially predicted would occur so early on.
So, to everyone that’s been part of making this an unreal, amazing, exhausting and incredible week (& my wife for putting up with me being maybe a little over-excited all week) – Thank You! I hope Manpacks lives up to your expectations, and if not call us on it, we want to know if we’re not!
Update: I also just did an interview with Rick (who is also now a Manpacks customer) at Hit Radio 100 in Guam!
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