These six success stories show how anyone can earn fame--and perhaps make income--online.
Jeff Bertolucci, PC World
PC World
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
12:19 AM
Can you really earn fame and fortune by posting your creative works online? A lot depends on your talent and luck. But for a fortunate few, the Web has proven to be a great promotional tool. We looked at six success stories. If you're interested in bringing your own ideas to the Net, see "39 Ways to Put Yourself on the Web" for a rundown of the best online tools and services for posting videos and music, creating blogs, publishing books, and forming social networks.
Soon after the devastating Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami of December 2004, Brian Dalton, a writer/director in Temecula, California, began pondering why such tragedies occur. Why would an all-loving, all-powerful God allow such misery? His musings led him to write a short comedy script, "Mr. Deity and the Evil," in which an anxious, distracted, yet essentially benign creator decides what types of suffering should afflict the human race. "Holocausts?" asks his clipboard-carrying assistant, Larry. "Yeah, I'm gonna allow it," answers Mr. Deity matter-of-factly. Torture, natural disasters, and Down syndrome make the cut too. Taking those things out "will make it way too easy for people to believe in me," Mr. Deity decides.
"I had friends who read it and liked it, and thought we should do something with it," he says. Eventually they posted twoepisodes on YouTube. A favorable mention on Digg brought a lot of viewers, which in turn spurred YouTube to place "Mr. Deity" on its home page. "It took off from there and never really stopped," says Dalton.
Dalton is now developing a TV pilot, and he has been approached by an agent for a book deal. He calls the "Mr. Deity" franchise "profitable," but can't discuss specifics.
Blendtec, a little-known blender manufacturer in Orem, Utah, had a problem. "We had some major accounts commercially for our blenders, but as a home machine, we had no branding at all," says company marketing manager George Wright. But Blendtec quickly made a name for itself when it started posting its campy "Will It Blend?" videos online.
Each video features lab-coat-wearing Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson grinding materials that should never see the inside of a consumer blender, including marbles, glow sticks, Bic lighters, and even an iPhone. With cheesy game-show music playing in the background, the amiable Dickson pulverizes the unfortunate objects, which usually wind up as a pile of dust or slop. (The iPhone had a few surviving metal shards, though.)
The videos are played for laughs. In the Bic clip, for instance, the grinding lighters catch fire. The clip then cuts to stock footage of a nuclear explosion, followed by firefighters extinguishing a blaze, and finally a soot-faced Dickson, who deadpans: "You really don't want to try this one at home."
Marketing campaigns usually cost money, but the "Will It Blend?" videos have actually turned a profit for Blendtec. Wright estimates that the company has earned $40,000 from the campaign, with roughly $25,000 of that coming from video-posting siteRevver, which shares revenues with its content creators. The company also sells a DVD of the first 50 "Will It Blend?" videos on its Web site (where you can also pick up a "Will It Blend?" T-shirt). In addition, the company has produced similar videos for other businesses, including Novell.
The clips are so popular that they've earned Dickson guest appearances on NBC'sTodayandTonightshows. More important, though, they've made Blendtec known. Says Wright: "When it comes to viral marketing, here's the key: Make your content engaging so it'll have appeal. People will want to watch it."
When Los Angeles comedian Lisa Donovan uploaded her first video to YouTube in June 2006, her intent wasn't to be discovered. "At the time, that wasn't what YouTube was about," says Donovan, who's better known as Lisa Nova on the video-posting site. "It was just a fun, creative thing to do."
What happened next far exceeded Donovan's wildest expectations. Her clip "Teenie Weenie," a satirical look at a bubble-headed pop star who takes herself way too seriously, gathered enough viral buzz to earn a spot on YouTube's home page, where it was viewed by a casting director forMADtv, Fox's late-night comedy sketch series. Soon after, Donovan earned a brief, end-of-season stint on the show.
Though theMADtvgig ended quickly, Donovan's YouTube popularity has endured. HerLisa Nova channelis the eighth-most-popular one on the site, with 70,000 subscribers and 25 million video views. Fans tune in to watch Lisa's nutty celebrity impressions and sketch comedies, including an ultralow-budget parody of the sword-and-sandal epic300, and "Hillary vs. Obama," in which two supporters of the Democratic presidential candidates engage in increasingly uncivil debate.
Donovan, a member of the YouTube Partnership Program, which shares revenues with a select group of video posters, declined to say how much she has made off her clips. But she's sold on the Web.
"I'll stay on YouTube, for sure," says Donovan, who came to Los Angeles in 2002 after graduating from the University of Colorado with a political science degree. "I'd love to create a Web series and maybe put it up on YouTube or possibly on other sites." She also hopes to make a feature film someday, and to expand the video production business she runs with boyfriend Danny Zappin.
Post Videos, Earn $$$
A year ago, Kip Kay of St. Petersburg, Florida, began posting short clips onMetacafe, a video site that shares revenues with its content producers. Kay has made over $57,000 from hisshort how-to videos for techies, making him one of the site's top earners.
Kay's topics include how to build a laser flashlight, how to make a pair of infrared goggles for under $10, and how to chill a soda can in 2 minutes. The clips are informative, interesting, and perfect for short attention spans.
Where do his ideas come from? "There's no big magic book, and a lot of stuff I've known over the years," says Kay. "I do find some ideas on the Internet too." Since he retains the rights to his videos, Kay is free to post his clips elsewhere. He has gotten offers from competing sites, but so far nearly all of his profits have come from Metacafe. Kay plans to make videos "as long as I continue to be successful at it."
When Kamilla Reid, a first-time author in Edmonton, Alberta, wanted to publish her children's fantasy novelThe Questory of Root Karbunkulus, she bypassed traditional booksellers and instead chose BookSurge, Amazon's self-publishing division. While thousands of writers self-publish each year, what makes Reid's story unique is her ambitious use of the Web to market her work, a campaign featuring aprofessional-caliber promotional sitewith eye-catching graphics, moody background music, and even a video trailer for the book.
Root Karbunkulusis about a 14-year-old girl who is invited to participate in a treasure hunt in a magical world. Envisioning a six-part series, Reid is currently writing the second book while she markets the first. For her promotional site, she used local talent to fulfill her vision: A composer from the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra orchestrated the music, and an enthusiastic group of young Web designers created the magical look and feel that Reid wanted for her preteen target audience. As for the video trailer, Reid, who has a background in theater and film, shot it herself using a Canon video camera. Her ex-husband--they're still friends, she says--edited the clip. "I still had to pay him," she laughs.
Reid estimates she has spent about $10,000 on the entire project, a significant outlay that required her to take out a home equity loan. The good news is, she's selling books--650, in fact--after only a few weeks of marketing, which includes tours of local schools. "From what I've heard, traditional houses are impressed if [first-time fiction authors] can sell 1000 books in a year," she says.
Ultimately, though, Reid would like to sign with a major publisher. When and if that day comes, she believes her promotional efforts will enable her to negotiate a better deal.
When William Sledd of Paducah, Kentucky, began posting fashion-advice videos on YouTube in September 2006, stardom was the last thing on his mind. "I was bored, I live in a very small town," says Sledd, whose day job was selling clothes at the local Gap. Using his new iMac, Sledd taught himself basic video editing skills and soon became a YouTube regular, dispensing cheery-yet-caustic fashion tips and starting each video with an upbeat "Hey, bitches!" His big break came only a month after he started, when his "Denim Edition" clip was featured on YouTube's front page.
"That's what blew everything out of perspective," says Sledd. "Once I did that video, things changed." His YouTube channel, "Ask a Gay Man," has since become the site's sixth-most-subscribed series of all time, and Sledd has traveled to New York and Los Angeles to meet icons of the fashion industry. He has also signed a TV development deal with NBC Universal, with show plans in the nascent stage. "It's still too early to say what it's going to be," says Sledd. "It may be a reality-based show. Whatever it's going to be, it's going to be amazing."
Sledd, a member of YouTube's revenue-sharing program, declined to say what he makes off his video posts. He hints, though, that his YouTube income is fairly modest. "Could you quit your job? No. But some of these people posting are kids. They may quite possibly make more money [posting videos] versus working at some retail store or fast-food place."
Despite his newfound fame, Sledd hasn't quit his day job either: "I still work at the Gap, but very, very little. It's like family to me."