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.
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