It's been (mostly) fun...

This a tough industry to make a living in. Good luck with the future. Plugin guru has a "business model" that seems to be working for him with a similar sort of idea, with soft synths rather than the axe fx. Check him out if you ever feel inspired to start things up again. As a guy that's lives and breaths music, but makes a living in something entirely different, good luck and keep your head up.
 
This is a big loss for the forum. People love free stuff. In any business, there are hard lessons to be learned. Best of luck, Chris. I think that you'll land on your two feet somewhere....just a matter of time. I hope you don't disappear altogether.
 
thanks for everything Chris. You videos help me out a lot. I'm mostly surprised that cliff or anybody didn't acknowledge your contributions. Kinda weird. So i get why your doing what your doing. Good luck and thanks.
 
Unfortunately you learned life's important lesson, if you give yourself away for free you will taken for granted. After a teaser video or two I'd have approached FAS for support or shut it down then. Customers owe manufacturers nothing. You can be a fan from afar, it's less work.
 
jimfist said:
This is a big loss for the forum. People love free stuff. In any business, there are hard lessons to be learned. Best of luck, Chris. I think that you'll land on your two feet somewhere....just a matter of time. I hope you don't disappear altogether.
Click to expand...

+1 - Thanks for your strong participation. Enjoy the unit for your own enjoyment now and let others (including me) step up their contributions.
 
Hey Chris,
Thanks for taking time out to share your situation with all of us here. Like so many others, I've benefited greatly from all the information you so generously shared. I understand your perspective and fully respect your decision to bow out. It's a shame that you weren't recognized for all you have done. As someone already mentioned, when you give something away, the perceived value is often diminished. Yet when you charge a fair price, and deliver on your promise, the perceived value increases dramatically.

Now this could be your time for a new chapter. You have many special talents and abilities that I'd venture to say have yet to be fully maximized. I'd encourage you to redirect your focus and energy toward something completely new and different. Something where you'll be recognized and rewarded for your efforts, both personally and financially. I often find myself working to push others toward success. I've found that many people, even highly skilled and talented people, often lack the self-confidence, or are too fearful of failure, to achieve success. I hope you don't fall victim to those missed opportunities. I've been very fortunate to surround myself with eight very close friends who are highly successful. They could buy and sell me ten times over. Some of the commonalities they all share are that they are highly confident, they are risk takers, and they are generous beyond compare. So my encouragement to you is to 'Swing hard in case you hit it!' Swing for the fence. Falling down is part of life. Getting back up is living.

Best of luck to you. I hope you do something BIG!

Joe
 
Hi Chris,
Sorry FAS hasn't stepped up to help keep you going ..Oh well that's business.
Different strokes. Remember the HARDEST thing about any venture is getting started with solid sizable content and fan base. Lets see now... check and check.
I suggest a private face book page like" Axe Fx Quatum Leap" and ask for a yearly paypal fee.Those that need it will have NO PROBLEM paying 10 or 20 bucks to save days grumbling rather than playing.
Every newbee and more than a few regulars would save days with your incite and vids. Don't say good-bye, just say next, next, next and search for the RIGHT OUTLET.... You do have a fan base of sorts..Be a shame to give up with so much knowledge AND content ready to go. Just sayin..:encouragement:
 
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I've frequented a variety of forums that were focused on a variety of things over the years. The first constant is that there is always one or two people that have a serious passion for the subject matter and have a very deep knowledge and understanding of it. They spend countless hours contributing to the community and it's usually appreciated even if it isn't clearly expressed. The other constant is that no matter what the subject of the forum is that once they try to go beyond that dynamic of the forum that it always goes sideways.

I don't know why that is, but it seems to always go that way.

As an observer my biggest concern about the chat format is that anything that is discussed on this forum creates a record of the incident that I can search for or just run across by cruising through the threads. You take that off site and now I have two places I have to keep on top of and I am not even sure if a chat room maintains a record and I am pretty sure that it isn't going to be parsed by subject. That's just my perspective and I'm not sure if anyone else felt that way or cared.
 
Wow, this is the first I have heard that you were trying to start a business giving classes on how to use the Axe. I know that you have done a lot of vids on "How To" and I always thought that you just had a grip of extra free time. I admire your wanting to provide accurate information here on the forum and I doubt anyone here would disagree with that statement.

Personally I think maybe you're being a little hard on yourself with your business expectations, it still has potential maybe it just lacks proper marketing. Step back and look at it from a different perspective... you will know what to do. Until then don't feel like you have to be responsible to have all the answers,

Remember it's just a thing. Deal with it on Hawaiian time bra! get choke Lau Lau's... It i'll be mo' betta, you come back when you ready, shaka ;) .

I leave you with...

 
It's a sad story, but that's life.

I've learned over the years that people generally equate value with price and consequently feel that if it's free, then it's not as valuable as the product or service you paid very dearly for.
I never get treated more poorly than when I volunteer my services. When I charge top dollar, I get treated like royalty. Now why is that?

Don't ever give anything away unless you can afford to, and if you do, give it away because you want to, with no expectations of reciprocation.
Anything else and you'll become bitter and jaded.

Don't start a business until you've really studied whether it's viable and there is a real need which people will be willing to pay for. Doesn't matter if it's something you really want to do. The country is full of derelict sound companies and recording studios because that's the business somebody wanted to do, but there was no market for it.

Anyway, hopefully you can pick yourself up and dust yourself off and take it as a life lesson.

Oh, and Merry Christmas. I mean it.
 
Too bad that this happened...I know it hurts when you put your soul into something and no"thank you" is coming back...I do regret this so much..
You were very helpful for a lot of us.."newbie" to make things go on with that magic black box..so in the end with all regrets and appreciation I say to you
Thank you and God bless you...
 
I'm sad for you Chris. I also used your videos when I got my Axe and MFC to set it all up and it was a great help for me so thank you!

A few years ago I spent a year developing a new web service only to realise that I would never be able to make a living out of it. On one hand a year down the drain and on the other hand an invaluable business lesson of not building things no one is willing to pay money for.

So since then I've tried many many business ideas until eventually finding one that is now providing a very comfortable living and has great potential to grow. I've tried these ideas by doing things like creating landing pages for a product or service that didn't really exist, but where I could introduce the product or service with made up screenshots and pricing, having a call to action like "we're currently in private beta, please enter your email address to get invited to the next round of beta testers". I then spent like $100 on Google Adwords driving people to the site, seeing if there was enough interest in the product or service before actually building it. This enabled me to spend a couple of days to test an idea instead of a year like previously and that has made all the difference for me.

I also subscribe to the idea of not giving stuff away for free if your planning to make a living out of it. Your journey sounds very much like these countless web services offering their service for free thinking that "if we just get enough users, surely we figure out a way to make money somehow" and it very rarely work out that way. If you don't make a little money with a few users, you're not likely to make a lot of money with a lot of users.

When you're ready for your next business venture, I would recommend starting small, trying to make a little bit of money from a small group of dedicated fans and build from there, and not trying to make a full time living until you absolutely know at it's going to work.

Thanks for your hard work and good luck with all your future endeavours!
 
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Firstly, I really want to thank you. Your videos are the only thing that practically got me started on really using the Axe FX II and configuring the MFC + Mission SP-1 pedals. They've been quite invaluable for me in that sense. And I did always think that you'd been hired by FAS to do the videos, it was a given for me. Turns out you weren't!

It does suck major ass that what's happened, happened. But taking down your videos? I have to say that this is where my understanding ends. You definitely come out as a crybaby in this, who takes away everything after he can't have something. And the bit that bugs me most, is that you didn't even ask for it. Now here's a thing to learn, a thing that's especially been reinforced inside my head as a principle in the business world in my work life and studies; NEVER EXPECT SOMETHING TO JUST HAPPEN IF YOU DON'T MAKE IT HAPPEN! Imagine two workers, employees 1 and 2 at a workplace doing the same job. They've both been working at the same position for 5 years. Now employee 1 asks for a slight pay raise. He gets it, while the other one just keeps waiting for it, hoping it to happen. What do you think, who's more likely to get a pay raise? It's a fact that most often than not, in the current state of the world, you rarely get what you want if you don't seek and ask for it. If you don't ask people to pay for your videos, there probably will not be much cash flow. You'd have to be a Youtube celebrity (hundreds of thousands of subscribers) or a really helpful person to a million people in order to make really some money in the form of Youtube bonuses and donations. The thing that astounds me the most, is that despite WANTING to be endorsed and paid for by FAS, you haven't asked for it. If I was FAS, seeing you do your videos like you do them, I'd think "Hey, that's a nice guy, it's a good thing that he's doing such helpful videos". If I was FAS, READING YOUR MESSAGE WHERE YOU ASK TO BE HIRED BY THEM... I'd think, "Ok, a lot of people like this guy and his videos are very easy to understand, they help a lot of beginners and even advanced users to actually understand the whole thing... Yeah, I suppose we could pay him an X amount of money and endorse him with the Axe gear he needs for doing the videos".

I love your videos and think you deserve to be hired if you keep pushing such quality content. But man. If you want to be hired, you need to ASK FOR IT. Most people, like ME for example, search Youtube for Axe FX tutorials and end up finding your videos, watching them and thinking it was great that such a video existed. But it's pretty much only you who will think how the maker of the video will make a living. The normal viewer will just watch the video, maybe click the like-button and think "well, wasn't that a helpful and cool video". If you'd stopped the video halfway, and put a link to your own video store, chances are you'd made 100x the money you've made this far. It would've included me.

And now, the first logical step here is to quickly erase a mistake made in a surge of emotion, and put back your videos. After this thread, I think a lot of people would've pressed the donate-button, realizing that you never made a cent off of these. But not a chance if you haven't even got the videos online, which would be the reason to donate in the first place.
 
Chris!

I really think it's a great loss for everyone on this forum and the community as a whole if you "leave" so to speak!!
I have learned so much from your videos, and I do believe there's a great place and market for such a nice instruction videos!

At the same time reading your post I do understand completely where you are coming from, I would probably feel the same way.
Maybe you should just contact Cliff and FAS and come up with an idea about some sponsor thing, or you being able to sell videos through their FAS shop in collaboration with FAS?

I really do believe that the demand for such videos will increase all the time, being that the firmware gets more and more complex
and the evolving hardware can handle more and more.

If I can give you an advice it would be, don't shut any doors. You've made a nice and clear statement of how you feel and what your situation is. Give it some time, get some perspective and then try to make a deal with FAS or some educational company to maybe sell
classes or something, combined with support?.

The thing is I think you need to define very clear what you want out of the time you spend and the cost it generates to any future partner
and see if you can get a reasonable deal and something to build from.

Give it some time, let things cool off and I believe things will work out in the end. I think you laid a good foundation just by telling everybody how things are, and what your situation is and your struggles. Give people some time to ponder on it and maybe new possibilites are just around the corner.!


I hope you stick around man , you are a very valuable member in this community and I've learned so much from your videos and postings on this forum.

you have a good one Chris !!

//Kenneth
 
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