ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

9 years, 6 months ago - Paddy Robinson-Griffin

Stephan, if you are going to make money from a web series, it's either going to be from ad revenue through a platform like YouTube, or in-programme sponsorship. For either to be worth anything, you need a lot if regular eyeballs, and that means you need to be entertaining and have a lot of episodes. Lots of episodes as it's a bit if a numbers game, and if someone finds you then they need to have a load of stuff to find.

Last web series I watched was from The Onion, called 'sex house' it was a spoof of 'big brother'-style shows. They'd clearly spent some money on doing a good job of it. But people seem to like all kinds of utter shit on YouTube, so there's space there for lower budget productions. And if you can get regular eyeballs, you can seek sponsorship and make a living.

9 years, 6 months ago - Chris Regan

Hi Stephan,

I'm working on a webseries right now! I've been keeping a video diary on my youtube page - www.youtube.com/cgregan

Paddy is right, it's definitely about getting views and it's tough sometimes. I'm only ten episodes into mine and we've made it to just under a thousand subscribers and over 7,000 views, but it's felt like we've had to fight for every one of those views at times.

I think it would be a big ask to get people to pay for a web series, unless you had a big name or it was a recognised property, but even then there is so much content out there for free.

Marble Hornets is a really good one to watch if you're interested in seeing how a successful webseries did it.

Hope that helps!

Chris

9 years, 6 months ago - Benjamin Field

Morning!

My experience from The Chronicles of Professor Elemental is that a known name is a must for a high quantity of viewers.

I had 3 episodes and no subscribers. After the first episode I had 25,000 views and 1000 subscribers.

Professor Elemental isn't a huge name but clearly big enough. It was also quite a unique idea so got shared around a bit.

We spent £7,500.00 on the series which we shot in 7 days and took nearly 6 months in Post Production. The series is still being watched now and we made it it 2012.

In terms of Revenue from Youtube, so far, I've made £162.00 and the whole series probably has nearly 70,000 views

We didn't really have a plan for it, as it was made for fun and to see what we could achieve. In hindsight we should have done a lot more with it.

Having said that my Youtube channel now attracts a fair amount of attention.

Hope this is helpful in some way. I'd be happy to discuss your ideas further if you would like.

Cheers

Ben

9 years, 6 months ago - Joe Golby

Stephan
Have really good reason to want to create a web series over say, a short film which you can do the festival circuit with and then online eventually anyway or a low budget feature you might even be able to sell to a distributor. I've had the pleasure of working creatively on stand alone videos for some popular UK YouTubers as well as on a couple successful webseries and it's always interesting to see the different approaches, aims and expectations of each.

Freddie Wong of internet fame created one of the most popular web series on the internet 'Video Game High School' and his conclusion was still "YouTube’s current model cannot financially support long-form high-production value series"
You can read his post mortem after 3 series here http://www.rocketjump.com/blog/vghs-post-mortem.

Sadly a good idea or great concept does not guarantee views or subscribers, most of the 'successful' web series had their audience already in place from other content before they went down that route. It's hard to go from an empty channel to a few thousand subscribers in under 12months If your not putting out regular content. I know of a handful of SciFi and Fantasy web series who have tried to promote their shows at London’s ComiCon which seems like the ideal place to drum up a fan base but none could translate panel talks and posters into significant viewing numbers.

Ben's point of having a name involved is an excellent one, I worked on a webseries '5-a-side' who's cast included a popular YouTuber (11m subs) as well as Keith Duffy of Boyzone and a few other soap actors. It got respectable viewing numbers and is the only web series I know of first hand to have made the mythical leap to TV when it was aired on BT Sport, it still did not retain it's original format and it's 5 web episodes were amalgamated into 2 TV length episodes.

The webseries that most often fails and annoys me personally is the one acting as the director/producer's own wish fulfilment eg: “I want to direct a HBO style fantasy drama". This results in a lot of other peoples money being begged for through crowdfunding sites and a lot of actors and crew being talked into working for free so the director gets to be all directory on the set, blog about how amazing it is for them before finally releasing their creation to the indifferent internet where it gets a couple thousand views and disappears into the ether.

Doing it for fun (the whole crew's), for the love or because you have story you are dying to tell are some of the best reasons.

9 years, 6 months ago - Marlom Tander

There are many great reasons to make a web series, but making a profit isn't one of them (not unless you have zero production costs).

If you want to make money on YT, look at what makes money. High production values isn't anywhere on the list. Entertainment / infotainment value is pretty much everything.

OTOH if you are happy to lose all the money, then it's great showcase for your skill.

BUT

Metrics can be a two edged sword. If your plan is to leverage up from series to feature you'll be seeking investors for the feature.

First thing they do, go to your web series and look at two things - quality, metrics. Lets assume quality (writing, acting, direction, production) is a given.

It's YT. Anything under a million views is just meh.

The key issue for investors would be that your lack of views translates to a subtext of "can't sell, but wants MY MONEY for a feature?". This isn't an issue so long as you know how to deal with it.

My point isn't that you need a million views, my point is that when you seek funds, you play up the quality of production for cost, and downplay your views. "Of course, our X views is just family and friends because the YT commercial model doesn't make it worth investing anything in marketing/promotion unless it's comedy/kittens/gaming or makeup/fashion! So we focussed our efforts and limited funds on the quality of the result because really, it's a calling card."

It's tempting to say "wow, we got 10,20,30K views which is great compared to others" but just don't do it. If the investor sees the views and knows the comparative numbers and the logic, they'll be impressed. If they don't get it, you telling them sounds like straw clutching at best and, at worst, that you really don't have a clue.

I've got a video on YT with 200K views but that's really because I suspect that a title that includes the words "victorian school punishment" is a bit clickbaity given that the other clips from the same day covering other aspects of a victorian working class life have 200-3000 views.

9 years, 6 months ago - Stephan George

Is there a dedicated website just dealing with webseries? www.webserieschannel.com/ hasn't been updated since a year, aside from that I couldn't really find anything...