Thanks! Perhaps other countries could be added and there could also be an overall subscription to get from any country, it's a good idea. I do feel I should get this working well for Japan before expanding.

~300 subscribers without much labor from you anymore isn't working well?

Edit: Checking out the website, from a sales funnel / marketing perspective, there are many things you could do to increase the sales just from the current traffic you're receiving - and would likely reduce the new customer acquisition cost from $60.

Edit2: Other things can be done to reduce churn rate as well.

Yes, it would be great if it could continue like that, but extrapolating a bit from that chart it seems this service could experience a slow death unless I can figure out a way to market it (and reduce churn).

Have you thought about adding a candy "rewards" program?

If someone starts a subscription from a referral maybe they and the referrer can each get a bonus candy package when they start? That would probably be much cheaper than trying to do advertising with only a marginal increase in packaging complexity.

Yes, that's been on my mind, especially since I keep having candy left over because there is a difference between the bulk amounts I buy (which have to be divisible by 60 generally) and the amount of subscribers I have.

I have to be careful though, since it does actually cost a bit to send a package. Another thing I considered was starting some page similar to http://duckduckgo.com/spread.html and reward the most helpful people (as judged by me or by voting) with free extra packages.

Maybe come up with a 3 months subscription package or something along that line and reward those who pay the 3 months subscription upfront with additional candies for free. You can use the leftovers you have or other unique Japanese products that people may like. This way you're assured that you have subscribers for the next 3 months.

Or instead of giving away free candies to the package I mentioned above, reduce the price to say $20-$22/mth if they pay upfront for 3 months to give them the $6-9 savings over 3 months.

Not sure how much space the leftover candy takes up, but twice a year (maybe once in the summer and once before the winter holidays) you could sell $24 boxes of random leftovers from the year. Would be great for new subscribers. You could even give the option of doing a random box + first month of a subscription for $36.

Thanks, in response to HN suggestions I added the option to get a sample envelope, for which I can use the extra items. I think I already sold a few dozen, now just need to write another script that finds those orders on PayPal. Their site is painfully slow to navigate by hand.

What kind of marketing are you doing to increase subscribers? Do you send out press releases to bloggers, magazines and news sites?

Thanks for the email template, I plan on using it as a base for reaching out to bloggers. Is there something that can help with this, besides hiring an expensive PR agency?

I mean finding bloggers, contacting them with personally crafted messages and keeping in touch with them. I'm terrible at following up on emails when I happen to be in the coding zone.

I recently saw an interesting strategy for finding bloggers to contact: "I wrote some code that pulled the top 500 environmental blogs and their descriptions from Technorati along with their site descriptions." This is quoted from: http://www.giftrocket.com/why-marketing-bd-should-learn-to-c.... I intend on trying this to get some publicity for my sock subscription site - sockpanda.com

Nothing free, as far as I know. Just an excel spreadsheet, some research, and a well-organized email inbox.

I should look into this and craft a nice email with useful media for them to use. What's been holding me back is that I don't really know exactly what to say in such an email to make it likely for them to feature it. It's true that one mention from Lifehacker for example could really change things completely.

Just go at it and see how well it works out. You can always send out one email a day to a news outlet or blogger and tweak it as you go along. As an example, it could be this:

"Dear Blogger,

Are your readers still looking for that unique Valentines day gift? Candy Japan has the answer. We sell candy subscriptions filled with fun and delicious Japanese candy.

How does it work? Every two weeks, we select some surprise Japanese candy and mail it to you directly from Japan. Prices start at $23.95 per month for two candy deliveries each month, or you can buy a single delivery for $13.00.

For more information, visit www.candyjapan.com

If you would like any more information, you can email me directly at [email]. I can also provide further images optimized for blog posts an emails.

Sincerely,

[Name]

Obviously, its directed at bloggers or websites who talk about gifts, gift giving or valentines day. You would tweak it depending on who you're trying to reach. After Valentines day, you would direct it to people looking to give fun gifts. With your prices, it would be best to concentrate on hip, urban websites or bloggers.

I just wrote that quickly by the way, maybe other people here can improve on it.

Well, there are plenty of things you can do if you understand nuances of marketing - just with the design, sales copy (text on the page), and other marketing pieces. You have a good start. And really I'm jealous of what you've accomplished so far. You could make this 10 times bigger with little effort, and time.

I saw you're Finnish - salmiakki products would be popular with Scandinavian expats... (Norwegian here, living in the UK - Amazon delivers some salty licorice / ammonium chloride candy, but their selection is very limited and mostly to Dutch brands I'm not used to)

A friend of mine was visiting me in NYC from Norway and we were talking about Salmiakki Koskenkorva. It's the first thing that I've simply been completely unable to find here -- looked for it all over the city. Still need to get a bottle.

It seems that http://www.suomikauppa.fi/?language=en is executing well here.

Also, the price is a bit high for candy... have you tried a one envelope a month subscription?

This is a good idea.

Another one would be a one-time purchase that is slightly more pricey but gives more. I don't want to commit to a monthly thing, but I'd pay $40 to get a single, larger package for my Japan-obsessed daughter's birthday and Christmas.

I could try that, but am hesitating a bit to introduce more complexity to this, since then I would have multiple tiers of subscribers.

Do you have to precommmit to the grocery store with how much candy you'll buy? If not, then really the only added complexity would be the label printing step - you just print some labels on different frequencies from others. If I were you, I'd be listening carefully to the feedback you're hearing in these comments - seems like there's a lot of demand for a less frequent/less expensive option.

If you want more data on whether you should do this, try asking customers that have canceled their subscription if they'd stay on if it was once a month. Also, think about running an a/b test with once a month vs twice a month...

No, I don't need to precommit. There is nothing really preventing me from doing this.

I want to say yes to this experiment, but immediately come up with more stuff that this would require that holds me back from adding it right now.

With tiers you will eventually have people who want to upgrade / downgrade between the tiers (of course I can just say you can't do that). I need to change my scripts that scan PayPal to support these tiers and still correctly figure out who to send to.

Need a tier selection page and this will also complicate wording on the main page. Not missing out on those customers who only wanted one envelope a month seems it might make this worth doing, agreeing with you there and hoping to find the time to add this.

I agree, I don't think your churn rate is so bad that you need to offer any more levels. I would put all your work into acquiring new subscribers first. Every business is going to have churn, but the only way to grow is with new customers.

I second the once a month idea, you'd have me as a buyer.

I would appreciate a service that sent me the same thing over and over every two weeks, say Mini Dickmann's from Germany, they are the best.

This way people could get their favorite thing, or a selection which is tailored to them.