Reply To: Strange Business Model
You've obviously succeeded in getting memed more than once.
I think a key here is to make the website a little bit stickier. As you mentioned, slashdotting means a huge immediate traffic spike with a much more moderate permanent increase in traffic.
The profile for most who hit the site from a slashdot (Or similar news/coolstuff aggregator) is probably to hit the one page linked, DL the song, and then leave, never to be seen again.
This is most likely why so many sites have all those annoying checkboxes you need to click when you just want to download something – they need you to come back to them just as much as JoCo needs people to come back here.
One (non-intrusive) way (which is largely meaningless now that TAW is drawing to a close) would be for the TAW link to go to the Songs page rather than to a direct download of the song. (Maybe keep a streaming link in the main post – but on the other hand, if you're slashdotted, streaming isn't likely to work very well unless your hosting is REALLY good)
It would still be easy to get to the song (one more jump), but it would force the viewer to encounter the rest of the song catalog, which might be enough to convince them to try another song as well (The "Bet you can't eat just one" model).
The downside would be a slightly higher degree of inconvenience for the subscribers, but a likely higher conversion rate on casual hits.
The product here is insanely good – the problem is merely that most people are unaware that it even exists. When I found JoCo's stuff one week ago, I couldn't believe that I hadn't seen it before.
I believe that the internet is a more powerful route to audience acquisition than gigging. It's like catching fish, the internet is a…. um… Net. And gigs are fishing rods. You're going to be able to target a lot better with gigs, and the gigs will likely be a more effective acquisition tool – but don't have the nearly infinite scalability that a good meme can have.
JoCo songs have been memed several times, so it stands to reason that it will happen again. It may seem unavoidable that the spike will go away, but I think that by rethinking the way in which the casual viewers encounter the site, more of them can be retained.