Recording a bunch of songs is one thing. Getting enough CDs made to be financially viable is another. Like most bands, we found ourselves at the end of the recording process and into the final stretch of mixing and mastering, with the looming problem of how to afford to get the damn things made.

We do live in a world of downloads, but you can't sign a download. People like buying CDs from us at gigs, and people who you could class as 'fans' like buying the physical product. But as always, getting the cash together to get 1000 copies made is always a problem.

So we came up with an idea to give 30 people the opportunity to buy 4 CDs in advance of which we sign one and they can give the others to friends, each of the 30 people also getting a thank you on the EP itself.

We started a special 'Destroy' page on our website here:

http://www.gwonder.com/gwonder/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=46&Itemid=53

And explained what we were doing, and put a paypal button on it. We then told our mailing list, our Facebook fans and our followers on Twitter what we were up to. Three days later, we had the 30 advance sales and the cash in our paypal account.

Now I know we said we only used Twitter as the header for this article, but to be honest it's the truth - nearly all the advance sales came from our followers on Twitter. We are extremely grateful to the Twitter community that has put up with us for three days of shouting about this, but we do think it's a testament to the way that people on Twitter actually connect with one another. It may be just text and 140 letters each tweet, but Twitterers listen and more importantly, they get it.

What's also interesting is that this kind of thing is entirely scaleable. Who knows what the future holds for bands like us dealing directly with people who value our music. Only time will tell.