Monday Mailbag #67

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I’ve signed up to support for the new season. The new structure works good for me and I love the focus of the newsletter. How did the new season launch go from your perspective? Do you keep any demographic data on who supports the site? Do you know what percentage of your readers are supporters? —AJ

I would say it went as I’d hoped/expected. Support slots were made available on Friday and were sold out in less than a day.

Before the new support structure was launched last Friday it had already been sent out to the people who supported last season. I had mentioned in that message to them that I intended to knock off about 10% of the support slots, and that’s right about where we landed. I knew moving to an 18-month book publishing schedule would cost me some subscribers, but it was what I had to do to keep the site going. And lowering the subscriber numbers ultimately makes the physical bonuses more valuable. So it’s hopefully a win-win for everyone.

I don’t really have demographic data on who supports the site. Well, I do know it’s about half international and half U.S. I know that simply from doing the book mailing. It’s probably 99% male, as you can imagine. Other than that, I don’t really know much of anything. I feel the average age of supporters went down with the release of the new support structure, based on what I know of those who left their supporter slot and those who signed up. If I had to guess why that is, it’s probably because older magicians tend to feel like, “I’m paying this money for the book,” whereas younger people are more comfortable with the idea of, “I’m paying this money to support the creator.”

As far as what percentage of my readers are also supporters, I don’t really know that either. I’m guessing around 5%.

Did you get your Lux? Mine arrived last week. It’s garbage. It seems like the majority of people talking about it on the Magic Cafe are having problems with theirs as well. It’s very obvious when the light source switches which makes the whole trick pretty useless. We need to have a Hall of Shame for magic products to warn people against them. The endorsements got me on this one. —CC

First off, no. I haven’t gotten Lux yet.

Second, you don’t need a Hall of Shame. You just need two pieces of knowledge.

The first bit of knowledge is that the magic endorsing game is nothing more than a mutual cock sucking society. It doesn’t matter how principled the people involved are. Now, they won’t usually tell you something is amazing if it sucks. But if something is good, they will tell you it’s incredible. It’s human nature to get sucked into that machine. If I tell people your product is great. Then when my product comes out, you can tell them my product is great. It’s not that they’re lying to you, necessarily. It’s just easy to get caught up in that reciprocal kind of process. And they see it as marketing, not lying.

The second piece of knowledge you need is The Jerx Purchasing Principle. Follow that and you’ll never get ripped off or misled by pre-release hype again.

Do you recommend any particular thumbtip? —PT

Huh… uhm, no. Not really. I just use a regular Vernet thumbtip. The hard kind. I going to look into adding some thumbtip effects to my regular repertoire this year. Perhaps during my experimentation with that I’ll hit on a particularly good thumbtip, I don’t know. I can’t imagine one can be that much better than the other. It’s like asking, “What’s the best cereal bowl?” They’re all pretty much alright.

But you have reminded me of something I wanted to ask. I’m working on a special ebook for supporters that’s going to go out in December. It’s going to be an almanac of the different magic tools I use regularly and why. Which peek wallet, which marked deck, which thumb-writer, etc. I’ve covered most of these things in some form or another, but I think it might be useful to have one centralized location for this information. If there’s a “tool” you’d like my recommendation on, send me an email and let me know.