Four web series you should NOT create.

I’ve been talking quite a bit about how to create a successful web series, and the types of content that work well on the internet. The honest truth is, there are probably a ton of great ideas I’ve never considered. Even more likely, there are a bunch of things which I would say are outright stupid ideas, which if done right would end up being huge successes. However, here are a few things I absolutely know won’t work, so don’t make the mistake of creating these types of web series:

• Kiddie Mobsters - You and your friends are between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five and you just love Tarintino. We’ll that’s fantastic, but no one is going to believe you are all wise cracking gangsters. If you can’t find actors that actually fit the part, then don’t do it. Unless you are doing it as a comedy, it simply won’t work.
• Zombies - It might just work, but good lord is it difficult. If you are working on a low budget its best to stay away from special effects ridden genres such as zombie flicks. Another downside to zombie films is that they require characters to die off to maintain a sense of high stress. As I mentioned before, killing off your main characters is bad for business. Maybe after you get a successful series under your belt you can go for zombies, but for your first series stay far away.
• Non-comedy musicals - It’s simply not part of the typical web audience. Something that is funny might work, or even something very dark and unusual like Sweeny Todd might work. But don’t expect Fiddler on the Roof to hit it big on the internet.
• Children’s programs - Its nice if you want to create wholesome children’s entertainment, but it probably won’t work on the web. Both at school and at home, many young kids have sites like youtube blocked by filtering software. Most teens know how to hack these programs, but kids under 10 don’t and don’t particularly care to. They are too busy playing webkinz, or whatever it is little kids do these days on the internet. Also, don’t forget that internet media is a one on one experience. I certainly don’t know many eight year olds with a whole lot of buying power. That means very few advertisers interested in using you as an advertising channel. As far as I know sugar coated cereals don’t advertise much on the net, so unless you get a ton of toy sponsors you probably won’t make much money off of your series even if it does become popular.

Four genres that make for profitable internet series

The internet is an unusual place, so its best not to automatically assume that what works in the movie world will work well on the internet, or vice versa. However, there are several time tested genres that work great for fictional web series:

Comedy - The Internet video world is built on comedy. It doesn’t matter if you are a single guy standing in front of a poorly lit white table cloth, if your writing is funny you will probably do just fine.

Nerds - I’d call it a sub genre of comedy since most nerd shows are comedies, but shows based around people being nerdy tend to do quite well on the internet. Case in point the series, Pure Pwnage, which is about hardcore video game players. The fact is, the majority of 16 to 34 year olds on the internet (you’re target audience) consider themselves to be nerdy. Either they are gamers, played dungeons and dragons as a kid, or are expert programmers…they all consider themselves nerds. And as such, they can identify with a protagonist who is a bit geeky, who doesn’t quite fit in.

Teen Drama - Most people would assume drama doesn’t do well on the net, but it does when targeted specifically for young teen girls ages 15 to 23. This is the sort of show where Shelly cheats on Ben with Kellie, then Kelli finds out, and so on. The greatest benefit of this type of show is the social nature of your target audience. Girls in that age group are much more likely to forward your clips, discuss it on forums, or link you all over myspace than your average male audience. Make a good show and your audience will be very loyal. The only downside is its probably much harder to make good merchandise for this sort of show.

Action - Action is probably the genre that requires the most skill, and thus hasn’t been utilized very well on the web just yet. Action is a cinematography heavy genre, so I’d recommend brushing up on your skills, and buying a good HD camera before jumping into an action series. However, if you can really get an intense action series going (think 24 type of intense), then there is a good chance you’ll enjoy pretty rapid and viral success.

Want to be a filmmaker? Maybe you should start a web series…

Everyone knows that breaking into the film world is tough, if not nearly impossible. The cost of creating a film is enormous, and the likelihood of making a profit on your first feature is extremely small. But over the past few months, I’ve realized there is a better way. That way is to create a web series…

Think about it. No trying to convince a big studio to finance you, only to subsequently destroy your vision. No shifty distributors to deal with. Just grab a DV camera, find some actors, buy lots of pizza, and start filming.

But what about the fame, the money, and the admiration? Well, I don’t know about the fame (unless you consider the numa numa guy to be famous), but lets talk about the money.

Four ways to make money with a web series
Is it possible to make money with a web series? For the longest time it was my intuition that it wasn’t. Boy was I wrong. In fact, I wonder if its possible not to make money with a web series. Think of these various streams of income:

• CPM Advertising - Video sites like Revver and Metacafe offer you money based on the number of views you recieve. And just recently, YouTube even announced it would expand its Partner Program to include even more users, and thus you could even make money on YouTube. Each site has its own policies, but fortunately most of them are non-exclusive. So you can actually upload your video to all of them.
• DVDs - Just like a film, you can easily sell DVDs of the whole series. In fact, if you provide enough content you can probably charge even more than a standard film.
• Merchandising - Develop interesting characters, catch phrases, or plot elements and you can turn that into all sorts of merchandise including T-shirts. The beauty of a web series is that it provides a unique “in the know” feel to your fans, and thus having T-shirts with your characters on it is more appealing than a very small indie film. It wouldn’t even surprise me if you’d sell more T-shirts than DVDs
• Website Advertising - In addition to the advertising embedded directly in your videos, you could also put advertising on your website. This could be CPC advertising (you get paid for each click, like google Adsense), CPM (you get paid for every 1000 views), or affiliates (you get paid when someone buys something through your link). If you put advertising on a website for an indie film, most people would be turned off by it. For a series where they are viewing content for free, people pretty much expect advertising to be present.

So you can certainly make money, but how much? Well, from my research I’ve found that $5/CPM is pretty much the low side of video advertising, in fact Metacafe pays that rate. That means for every 1000 views, you get $5. They may not seem like much, but consider the fact that many web videos get hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views.

I have a ton of new posts coming up that could help you create you own web series, so make sure to subscribe below either through email or RSS…(if your into that sort of thing.)

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