Transition Tunes — 7-Day Validation Test (<€50)
Question to answer: Will parents of neurodivergent kids pay €79 for a bespoke transition song from an FASD dad/songwriter — or do they only want it free?
The v1 offer being tested (decided): preview-before-pay. Intake form → Joshua writes → 20–30s preview by email → Stripe link only on the parent’s yes. This removes the trust barrier for a no-name seller and is the default on the page and in all copy, not a fallback.
Principle: Sell before you build anything beyond 3 samples. The samples are for Ellis anyway, so even total failure produces something the family keeps.
Setup (Day 0–1, ~4 hours + ~€25)
- Write + produce 3 sample songs for Ellis’s real transitions (tooth-brushing, leaving the house/playground, bedtime). One of the three in German. Suno commercial tier: ~€24. This is the only spend besides Stripe fees.
- Generate one lyric/picture card PDF for one sample (agents do this) — photograph it taped to the bathroom mirror. That photo is the second-best asset after the audio.
- Stand up the landing page (index.html in this package) + Tally intake form (free) + Stripe payment links (sent by email after the preview yes — never on the page). Total infra: €0. Hard gate: the page does not deploy and no link gets shared until all three sample MP3s are live in it (see README).
- Draft the story post in EN and DE (copy-paste-ready versions in README.md, plus admin-permission DMs and both order emails).
The test (Day 1–7)
Post the story + samples (audio clips or short video of Ellis’s routine card + song playing) in the named channels from README.md’s DISTRIBUTION section (verify membership, size, and rules there first; admin DM before any FB post): - 3–5 English FASD/autism/ADHD parent Facebook groups from the candidate table - r/FASD first; r/Autism_Parenting and r/ADHDparenting only after modmail approval (rules ban self-promo) - 1–2 German Pflege-/besondere-Kinder groups from the candidate table
Post is story-first: “I’m an FASD dad. Transitions were wrecking us. I write songs, so I wrote our way through them. Here’s what tooth-brushing sounds like now.” Link to page only in comments or when asked, per group norms. Reply to every comment personally.
Day 4: one follow-up post/comment thread answering the most common question (probably “can you do one for my kid?”) with the link.
Success thresholds (measure at Day 7)
| Signal | Kill | Iterate | Green light |
|---|---|---|---|
| Genuine demand comments/DMs (“can I get one”, “how much”, tagged another parent) | <10 | 10–24 | 25+ |
| Intake form starts | <8 | 8–19 | 20+ |
| Paid orders at €79 (after preview) | 0–1 | 2 | 3+ |
| Preview → paid conversion (previews sent vs. paid) | <25% with 4+ previews | 25–60% | >60% |
| German-market signal (any paid or 5+ demand signals from DE groups) | — | informs whether DE gets its own page | — |
- Green light (3+ paid, ≥25 signals): proceed to Month-1 plan Week 3. Raise nothing; deliver brilliantly, harvest testimonial videos.
- Iterate (2 paid or strong signals but weak conversion): the demand is real, the offer/price/packaging isn’t. Preview-before-pay is already the default, so the iterate levers are: €49 intro price, lead with the €149 suite, or shorten delivery promise. If previews get enthusiastic replies but no payments, it’s price; if intakes stall before previews, it’s the form or the story. One more 7-day cycle, still under €50 total.
- Kill (0–1 paid AND <10 signals): parents love it free and won’t pay. Stop. Total sunk: ≤€30 and ~10 hours, Ellis keeps three songs, Joshua keeps the story for Muse/portfolio. Write the post-mortem in this directory.
What this test deliberately does NOT do
- No ads, no domain purchase required (can run on a *.pages.dev URL), no bulk production tooling, no B2B/therapist outreach (that’s Week 4, post-validation), no German landing page yet (German post links to EN page with a German paragraph on it).
Confounds to watch
- Facebook group admin removal → have the mod-friendly version ready (README) and ask admins first where required.
- “Free for exposure” requests → one polite no + link. Free copies only in exchange for a usable testimonial video, max 2.
- Sympathy likes ≠ demand. Only count comments/DMs/form-starts/payments.