Launch Day: Why Our CAGED App Is the Proof, Not Just A Product

Today’s the day. Our CAGED app – both the free and paid versions – are live!

If you’ve been reading these last two weeks, you already know why this matters more to me than “we shipped an app.”

Two weeks ago I told you why the lens on this blog was widening. Last week I walked you through 8 years of lessons that all pointed toward the same conclusion: consistency and ownership are what actually move the needle, not any single tactic.

For the good part of 3 1/2 years (if not 4 with all the changes we’ve made), my business partner and I have been tinkering on this app and looking to bring it to life.

Talk about your Frankenstein moment!

But today is where that stops being a dream and starts being something you can actually go download!

What is Our CAGED Mobile App?

For anyone new here – and those not musically enclined: our mobile app: CAGED is an app built around the CAGED system.

The CAGED system is a guitar theory method used to map and navigate the fretboard of a guitar. It takes its name from the five standard open chord shapes in music: C, A, G, E, and D.

By moving these foundational shapes up the neck as movable barre chords, guitarists can play any chord or scale anywhere on the fretboard.

But although that CAGED system is a way of understanding the guitar fretboard, we have come to find that a lot of players learn pieces of it but never see it connected as a whole.

The great part about it is that it’s mobile friendly – something we haven’t readily seen around us even though everyone but the neighbours dog has a phone!

It comes with a free version that will definitely help beginners and intermediates with their guitar playing as well as a paid version that comes with all the bells & whistles you can ever imagine wanting or needing as a guitar player.

The fact that it’s web-based makes it easy to look at on your mobile phones, iPads, Desktops, (Windows and Mac).

I think our motto: The CAGED app is where guitar learning just got upgraded! Is definitely well deserved.

Now, don’t you go thinking that these exist just because I woke up one day and decided to build a guitar app. They exist because guitar and music education have been a genuine personal interest for both my business partner, (who is recording engineer), and I for a long time.

That said, after years of pointing people toward other people’s products, I wanted to know what it actually took to build one of my own, fully, end to end.

Now I know. And it definitely took a lot longer, and a lot more sweat and tears than I could have ever expected.

Why This Is the Proof, Not Just the Product

Here’s the thing about affiliate marketing, the thing I didn’t fully understand until I stopped doing only that.

When you point people toward someone else’s offer, you’re borrowing their trust, their product, their outcome. It’s a real skill, and it can genuinely work. But it has a ceiling.

Building the CAGED app meant owning every part of that ceiling instead of renting it.

Legal compliance. Privacy laws across three different frameworks. Terms and conditions as well as customer data policy. Not forgetting the SEO content plan built one article at a time.

It also meant reaching out to guitar teachers and users alike, one by one, to understand what they actually needed. We also needed a localization plan for markets I haven’t even entered yet.

None of that is glamorous, and most of it never would have shown up in a “how to succeed with affiliate marketing” post.

That’s exactly why it’s the proof. Anyone can talk about building a business online. Today, I can point to something and say: here it is, built the hard way, and it’s yours to try!

So What Happens Next

I’m not going to pretend launch day is the finish line; it’s closer to the starting gate if you asked me.

Now comes the “fun” part of getting that app out there to as many guitar players as possible. Only then will we know that we’ve got something worth bragging about (and paying the bills with!).

Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing all the information we can gather, as honestly as I’ve shared everything else here. What the first week’s numbers actually look like, what really happened. What kind of breaks I didn’t expect and so forth.

We’ve included a “feedback page” so we fully intend on getting a lot, (cross my fingers). With that, we’ll be able to see what we got wrong and hopefully, potentially got right and where this goes from here.

If you’ve been with me through the quiet stretch since January, through last week’s retrospective, and now through today, there’s only two words to say: “thank you“.

This one’s for you as much as it is for the players who are about to open the app for the first time.

Go check it out. The link is on my website.

Even if you’re not a guitar player; take a look at it and let me know what you think. Heck, if you know a guitar player, forward him the link. It’s Free!

Don’t forget to come back next week, because the real story starts now!

Trust the journey, victories await along the way.

Marc