Monetizing Animation

[DK]

Hi,
First off a very merry Christmas and happy new year to you all on the forum!

Thinking of revisiting an old project for the new year and would love to hear what thoughts some of you might have on the subject?

I ran an animated political satire website a couple years ago that was hugely popular but could not make enough money out of the site to keep it going, even with Paypal donation buttons, T-Shirts, Mugs etc.... not one person ever donated a cent or bought an item even though I was getting hundreds of hits per day and uploading one new animation a week. So my question is, how on earth would you monetize something like this? Any ideas?

Cheers
D.K

[synthsin75]

Ad revenue. I assume there are sites to help connect busy websites with prospective advertisers.

Also, you might consider trying to shop around to similarly oriented sites (in the same political vein) who may be interested in paying to carry your content. Many websites now days hire independent content creators.

[DK]

Interesting ideas, thanks Wes....The other problem I had was people pirating my content and putting it on Youtube. I also had a large, well known radio station pirating the audio and playing it on air.

What do you think about the content "interative" and allowing people to send a copy to friends for a small fee? This would make it harder to pirate the audio and harder to pirate the animation by hiding it behind code and relying on user input to drive the humour?

Cheers
D.K

[lwaxana]

Interesting topic! If you have a large following and your viewers have money, patreon might be a good fit. It's kind of nice that patreon allows users to see how much the artist is getting because otherwise the audience might assume you are raking in the dough and then not worry about contributing. It also links the idea that artists need money to keep creating their work.

But politics seems well matched with targeted advertising. For instance, what if your viewers are more likely to buy home emergency kits? Or food bearing trees? Or mutual funds? Or bunkers? You might even be able to sell what they need, or look into the amazon associates program?

I'm interested to see people's ideas!

[DK]

Nice observation there lwaxana re: matching audience to product. I think that was my biggest problem, I just coould'nt figure out what that particular audience was looking for as far as product. They were obviously not interested in marketing material that was politically oriented.

D.K

[synthsin75]

In the US patronage largely depends on which side of the political spectrum you cater to, as one side is typically much more charitable. I don't know about the Aussie climate, but I suspect it is somewhat similar.

As far as piracy goes, YouTube is usually very responsive to notifications of piracy. Do regular searches and report them. I would also threaten legal action against the radio station, even if I couldn't afford the lawyers (they don't know that). And maybe the Station would want to strike a deal for the use of past and future content, especially in lieu of paying damages for all the content they've already used.

But people will not pay to share (human nature), and even if they did, you would be hobbling your chances to go viral (which is what drives advertisers to your doorstep). Instead, what I would do is offer a regular stream of free content (like it sounds like you were doing) and encourage sharing as long as not for profit and with a link to your site, or better yet with a watermark/ID on each video (probably with a disclaimer that sharing constitutes an agreement that any redistribution of copyrighted material for profit, including YouTube ad revenue, would be liable to legal action).

Then it depends on how much traffic you generate. Ad revenue depends solely on traffic, so sharing and some sort of email subscription for alerts of new content is desired (as that ensures repeat visits). Once you have a sizable subscription base, you could start adding "premium content" for "members only" to "help you continue to push out quality content", maybe including incentives like members voting for the next subject or a raffle for a member to win a guest spot in an upcoming piece, and/or free swag (depending on level of membership subscription).

Some things to think about anyway.

[benedetti]

Ok, my 0.02 cents.

For someone to buy merchandising, they have to be fans. You simply don't go to a website for the first time and start buying stuff. So you need to build a following. How do you do that? For instance, with a subscription system, or with a newsletter that sends emails with special content and alerts of new content.

You need to find out what you audience is interested in. What can you sell them. Make a list of possible stuff and start trying things. If you have lots of visits, you can do A/B testing and find out with scientifical precision what sells more. And you can also test different headlines and images, which are two of the main factors that influence the conversion rate.

[ErikAtMapache]

A very interesting topic indeed. Perhaps you should rephrase you question:

How can I create and run a business which sells a product (which happens to be animation stuff I create)? Who has the money and the inclination to part with it, and how can I communicate with them? Why would they pay me?

We sadly have the same problem/challenge as all of those restaurants that fail -- people believe that if they can cook well, they can run a restaurant, when in reality the food is probably the least important part of the success. However, I believe that the first step to success is understanding the world and not just leaving it to chance.

[slowtiger]

Aside from all technical aspects mentioned, I miss the most important question of all:
"Does anyone other than your own mother want to see this?"
You know this question, it is said that several animators of the Golden Age had it on the wall.

Whatever you do, it needs to appeal to a certain amount of people before you can even think of marketing, let alone making money. And it has to appeal on at least three levels:
- the content needs to be appealing. No matter wether humourus or serious, people need to be interested in it.
- the animation needs to be appealing. Good choice of visual style, impeccable animation, voice acting, technical requirements.
- the context needs to be appealing. Just setting up a youtube channel will not suffice, and even your own tastefully designed website will not do. It needs to be embedded in some social ecosystem.

This is quite a lot to consider. But remember the animators at Warner's or Disney's: none of them had to do all of this by themselves alone. Know your own limitions, then team up with people who can do what you can't.

[synthsin75]

"Does anyone other than your own mother want to see this?"

I assume the previous piracy issue proves they do.

It needs to be embedded in some social ecosystem.

I knew I missed something. Facebook.

[slowtiger]

I knew I missed something. Facebook.

I said ecosystem, not dumpster ...

As for the piracy: getting ripped mostly means you've attracted the wrong crowd - the one who will not pay.

[synthsin75]

I knew I missed something. Facebook.

I said ecosystem, not dumpster ...

As for the piracy: getting ripped mostly means you've attracted the wrong crowd - the one who will not pay.

For a small startup, Facebook can build traffic...for free (don't get me wrong, I don't use Facebook myself, but then...I'm not looking to advertise anything either). The number of eyes on that dumpter is really the only thing that matters. If it weren't morally appalling, I'm sure people would erect ads at a car accident. And piracy indicates interest, especially from a radio station airing it with an interest for their own profit.

[DK]

I was hoping to attract a TV station or try to syndicate the cartoons to digital news media but nothing like that happened. I did get one job out of it though from a politician who contacted me and wanted an animation done for his website. Other than that I just let the domain name go as it was getting too time consuming and costly to keep running. However it did attract traffic to the site as the domain name was quickly picked up by some media marketing group.

D.K

[3deeguy]

DK, what is your YouTube channel? Most of us will have to learn how to monetize our work. I think marketing is a skill that has to be learned.

[DK]

Hi 3deeguy,
Sorry I thought I posted a reply to you on this thread.
Here's a sample of the work I was doing. They were extremely simple animations that could be
done within hours of a headline.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doq3DxsqPZk

Even though there have been some great suggestions I still cannot see a solid plan on how to go
about monetizing them. I did have google ads on my site and in 3 months I made about $150.00.

Cheers
D.K