As an introduction, I suggest (if you understand French that is!) you go and read a long but very interesting article by Patrick Beja, the only professional French podcaster who shares his career on Medium.
Patrick Beja during podcast recording
I know Patrick Beja for a while, we often had exchanges. What he has done with his podcast, Rendez-Vous Tech, is a model for The Guitar Channel.
It is also because of his initiative that I created a Patreon page but which never worked in my case because the Pass Backstage was already in place. The Backstage Pass subscription system I setup is a collaborative financing platform specific to The Guitar Channel.
Patrick proves that it is possible to create a media independent of the big companies (TV, radio, press, etc.) and to make it a viable business. I hope to follow these tracks soon for this aspect.
The Guitar Channel in numbers
Today The Guitar Channel is over 300 paying customers (including the pro partners), the year 2017 will end with a growth in customer numbers of + 20%.
This is an excellent result but the road is still long to be able to draw a salary from the project. Since June 2013, date of creation of the company, I did not get $1 in salary.
The current revenue of The Guitar Channel makes it possible to run the shop (to pay the web hosting, the travel expenses, etc.) but not yet to generate a salary.
The project is as exciting as ever if not more in fact! I always have a blast working 100% of my time on it. The prospects for development are very positive even if there is still a long way to reach the level of 1,000 paying customers who would allow to live financially from the project.
Some statistics of The Guitar Channel / The Guitar Channel:
- 1,600 articles published
- 2,400 videos online on YouTube and Vimeo
- 25,000 views per month
- 10,000 downloads per month of the podcast
- 50,000 cumulative followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter
2017 Review of La Chaîne Guitare
Much has been done in the last 12 months. Here is a selection of the striking actions in a random order:
- Establishment of several professional partnerships (including Elixir and Alhambra)
- Opening of the Paris showroom in June
- Complete revision of the website to optimize the mobile version (finally!)
- A new version of the landing page
- Organization of the guitar show for the 1st Puteaux Guitar Festival
- Traveling abroad: NAMM, Musikmesse, Guitar Summit, visiting Alhambra in Spain, the Montreal Jazz Festival, visiting the Matsumoto Deviser factory in Japan, etc.
- Memorable interviews with Tommy Emmanuel, Pete Thorn, JD Simo, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Steve Vai, and more.
- The phone calls to the new members of the club
- The meetings with the club members during the Special Events, the masterclasses and Vintage Guitar Afternoon.
- And all those fabulous moments of music and guitar at concerts!
2018 will be an opportunity to further accelerate this development with many projects that I wish to carry out. We'll talk about those projects very soon.
1,000 thanks to the online guitarists who believe in the project and who are happy about what the Backstage experience brings them.
Until the next adventures of this crazy project, keep on playing the guitar!
Pierre Journel.
[cta]
