Last weekend, I uploaded show number 36 of Clever Little Pod, together with a new addition to the CLP ‘brand’ – a PDF comedy magazine. The reason for the magazine was to see if I could raise some money from the podcast without going down the Cafepress route of selling T-shirts, caps and mugs. I figured that if people already enjoyed the podcast, then they might be willing to pay a pound to access some extra material with a similar flavour that could be forwarded to friends and printed off for colleagues.
If it was going to work, I figured I would know pretty quickly as the majority of podcast downloads happens during the first 7 days after the initial upload – and as the mag is promoted heavily on the podcast, then it would soon become apparent whether listeners would go for it or not.
Also over the past week, the mag has been plugged on a few blogs by friends of the show, for which I’m very grateful.
My expectations for the project were very low – I know how difficult it is to get people to buy products on the net, especially relating to comedy content, as there is so much free stuff out there already. But I figured it was worth a go anyway, especially as the whole process of putting the mag together was so enjoyable.
I sent out some preview copies just to make sure I wasn’t asking people to buy a total dud, and received some positive comments back – enough to give me confidence to go ahead. One respondent warned me of the difficulty of the challenge ahead – that I was essentially travelling in the wrong direction by charging a fee for content in a world that now expects everything to be free.
He was right. In the week since it launched, with hundreds of editions of CLP downloaded, and countless views of the blogs that very kindly plugged it, not one copy has been sold.
Not one.
Yes, I’m disappointed. Yes, I half expected it. And yes, I feel a little embarrassed that not a single copy has been sold. But there’s some comfort in this quote from David Baird’s ‘Thousand Paths to Creativity’ :-
“Nothing encourages creativity more than the opportunity it provides to fall flat on one’s face.”
It also provides a chance to analyse why it is so difficult to monetise content on the net. A pound – let’s face it – isn’t a lot of money. So here are a few possibilities:
1) The product wasn’t seen to be of sufficient value.
2) People didn’t know enough about what they were paying for.
3) People didn’t trust the buying process.
4) People weren’t interested in the different format.
5) People weren’t at their PC when listening to the podcast.
6) People didn’t want to pay any amount – whether it was 1p or £1.
7) The expectation of getting something for free was too strong to overcome.
I suspect it’s a combination of all of the above.
So, what now? How DO I capitalise on the existing popularity – such that it is – of a show that’s been sustained for two and a half years?
Maybe attempting to extract pound coins from listeners was a slightly vulgar strategy to benefit from the show. The alternative strategy is to play the slow game and use the bank of material to sell my abilities as a writer-performer. But to whom? Radio stations? Publishers? I think this the point I’ve reached. After two and a half years, I feel it’s time to start exploiting the content that now exists – which was the purpose of gazuky.net – but I feel I’m lacking a coherent strategy.
I’ve always been crap at selling my own abilities. So where do I go from here? Do I continue to attempt my own projects in a persistent, stubborn sort of Clive Sinclair way? Or do you think that something of value is only going to happen if I successfully sell my abilities into the mainstream? The key question is then – mainstream what? Unlike Van Gogh, I’m all ears…
