How Does One Make Money, When Anyone Can Do It?

0
making money
photo courtesy of fotolia

There’s one thing to keep in mind, new media versus old media, there are traditions that are important to preserve. They are art forms.

Take for example the newspaper industry. In 1985, I went to work for a startup technology company that created software for a Macintosh computer for newspaper ad production. Additionally, another product called “PageMaker” (which is now owned by Adobe and goes by InDesign) was introduced and coincidentally, we were both “in the news” as it related to the coming of “desktop publishing” where you don’t need to code your work, it is now “What You See Is What You Get” or WSIWYG. Fast forward 25+ years and the newspaper market is getting smaller, trying to find ways to monetize, many are not publishing in print, advertising dollars are decreasing, and their competition are the growing numbers of blogs with niche audiences stealing readers daily. You can say that everyone has become a publisher from 140 characters to personal blogs.

FACTOID: There are 87.8 million Tumblr blogs, 59.4 million WordPress blogs/sites and 2.4 billion Internet users worldwide and 169 million newspaper readers (at least once a week). 

This long-standing industry is becoming diluted mainly because the entry barrier has been taken down, access granted to anyone who has a keyboard and wi-fi.

In addition to this change, there is also the craft of “typography” that is becoming a lost art form. I watched this happen over the years when the “skilled union labor” that knew the craft started being put out to pasture. I was at several industry conventions in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s and was even called a “union buster” as anything created with a computer did not fall under the union rules so it became easy for newspapers to move to computer-based production and retire the union labor. The art of typography started to disappear from publications online and offline. This is a craft that is lost to many as the medium changed and everyone became a publisher and didn’t care about the craft.

Personally, I miss well-put together text. But don’t let that get lost in the next rest of this article about new Hollywood versus old Hollywood. Again, there are parallels that those of us “in the biz” think about. Granted I spent a good majority of my career as a marketing strategist for startup technology companies including being a veteran of the bubble bursting in Silicon Valley. But I am the 3rd generation in 4 generations of entertainers.

My love of Hollywood started long before I was born. It started with my Grandfather. When he was growing up, he aspired to be a cowboy so he did what any one with a dream did, he followed it and ran away and joined the US Cavalry. He later went to Hollywood found himself in the movies with then megastar, Tom Mix, who appeared in 291 films.

Fast-forward to today and access to being your own “production company” if you have a video camera, and the Internet.

FACTOID: YouTube has over a billion unique visitors a day, over 4 billion hours of video is watched each month and 72 hours of video uploaded every minute.

Please stop and consider these stats. It’s so much more impactful than the object lesson of the newspaper industry, which is fighting everyday to hold its ground. We’re dealing with billions of views of someone‘s YouTube video.

The one thing I’ve learned in my career is to “follow the money” and comedy, pranks, and kittens are the top of the heap with viewership on YouTube. I recently saw an interview with Jenna Marbles who has 1 BILLION subscribers on YouTube. She says it is “ridiculous” and said that more times that I could count during the interview. Compare that to the 1 million viewers of “Mad Men.”

We need to think of our craft, of the people who are preoccupying their time with these short bites of entertainment as we look into the future of making a business out of digital entertainment. Jenna is 26 – she doesn’t look it but is that sustainable? Can she in 10 years keep those views and subscribers? FYI it is reported that she turned down talk of film and TV options. But remember the Twitter account “Sh*t My Dad Says” and the TV show that did not translate?

tra·di·tion  [truhdishuhn]

noun  a continuing pattern of culture beliefs or practices

That’s why I believe that “tradition” is important to an industry. Granted we must adjust to the times, but “what” should we adjust. Diluting the entertainment industry with billions of options will only reduce the ability to make a living. Look at the handful of YouTubers who make over $250K per year with just over 30K partners (of which my channel is one). The average monetized video gets from $.25 to $.75 per 1000 views then a bit more if someone clicks on the advertisement via Adwords channels. But basically the bulk of the partner program members don’t clear over $1000 a month. Hard to make a living doing YouTube videos.

As filmmakers in the digital world try to figure out how they can create “scripted” content that can be curated, sustainable and beloved by their fans, the looming question is out there. How do you make money? My column will address these issues and offer suggestions to the reader in the coming months. Of course, this is the age of social media, and not hearing from you is like shouting in a forest. Please do share what you think and let’s dream big together.