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Emrox
The Pete Best of internet animation

Age 28, Male

hey!

Joined on 8/23/08

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more DOLLAH talk!

Posted by Emrox - February 13th, 2017

Entry 3 in my new "money guy" series. You don't need to read the other ones, but here's 1 and 2 anyway. Short version is I'm really into stocks and brokering now, and I'm gonna talk about it!

A couple weeks ago I stopped running ads on my youtube videos. I've never been one of those anti-ad guys - I've always felt that the people who are offended by advertising are using adblock anyway. And that's where I'd draw the line - if you could block or skip an ad, it was cool. I've always hated when people put a fucking audible read at the end of their videos fully knowing the promo code wouldn't work in a year and would permanently scar the content. Anyway my boy patty eventually sold me on full out ad-atheism, I think his main points were that people don't like them, they get in the way of the content, and they don't bring in much $$$ anyhow.

But now that I've been thinking about it I've started to realize the problem with ads goes a lot deeper. Ads as an income source are inherently unstable because people don't want to see them. The second someone is offered the choice not to see ads, they'll take it. Remember Tivo? People were effectively paying not to see commercials!

Adblock doesn't effect me much because I don't live off ad money, but when ad-circumventing affects big businesses, you get to see a lot of weird 4th-wall shit where companies desperately plead for you to turn off your blockers!

2559389_148703916543_27d68f73b44a596f1be135d61e629206.png

2559389_148703922043_687474703a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f557962714661642e.png

aw man! not my favorite website!

I've never understood these. If I'm blocking ads, wouldn't you presume I'm not going to click on one anyway? If I were an advertiser, I certainly wouldn't want someone to see my brand with that kind of reluctance!

I assume the reason corporations want you to disable adblocker even if you never click on ads is because they still get paid for impressions - it doesn't matter whether or not the ads actually work. But doesn't that remind you of a little something called...

CHEATING???????

Again, if you're an advertiser, this fucks you out of money. But this little bit of shadiness is really just a side-effect of a bigger issue: when you run ads, you're signing into a system that's bound to change. Unfortunately, some people get pretty comfortable tailoring many years of work to something that's fundamentally volatile.

Remember when youtube changed how their ad money was distributed and all the animators got fucked over? Nowadays there are hundreds of videos of people complaining about every little change in youtube's "algorithms" because some little change in a variable made half their content obsolete. Creators always make the execs out to be bad guys, but whether they know it or not, they're getting fucked because they've tailored their work for success on the platform. Of course, the platform doesn't "owe" the artists anything, so if a small change means more money for the big guys overall, you'll just be another casualty of progress.

What's the moral? Don't sign into someone else's thousand-foot formula.

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 (You know, like advertising)

Forty years from now the 10-minute video standard will be arbitrary and all those "subscribe/next video" screens will be nonsense. Your watermark will be a dead link, and your promo codes will be meaningless. If you have any sort of relevance, your videos will probably be preserved in some other format, and until you know what that is, it's probably a better idea just to make things that YOU want to make that aren't tailored for anything.

So how do we make money for our art? I can't say if this is realistic at all, but I really think we've got the right idea with supporter upgrades and patreon funds. Merch is pretty cool if you can swing it, though I haven't dipped my dick in that world just yet. If you've ever heard of Red Bar the guy who does that is pretty adamant about the no ads stuff, and honestly I think it's some of the only great internet content that isn't bending one way or another to please advertisers or rake in clicks. His whole theory is that if the content is good enough, people will pay for bonus content and merch, and he won't have to resort to any shady tactics to scam people for ad impressions.

If you didn't read the other posts, my new model is pretty similar - I'm selling source files for every new cartoon I make. This means I can actually put more time and effort into my cartoons, and they'll probably sell better if I do! Now I have to make things that are actually interesting and worth paying for, which will still have value long after the store is taken down. See? There's a silver lining.

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Emrox

Sorry to the Tom and the NG crew if this is at all destructive - I know they still make a lot of their income in ads. I don't really have a better platform for spouting this stuff, so if it's any consolation:

https://www.newgrounds.com/supporter
https://www.newgrounds.com/supporter
https://www.newgrounds.com/supporter
https://www.newgrounds.com/supporter
https://www.newgrounds.com/supporter
https://www.newgrounds.com/supporter

PhantomArcade

An interesting read, I've thought a lot on how content creators can find new means to survive and thrive. The crowd funding perspective is what it always seems to come back to, at least for now. I've found it pretty neat seeing how you sell the source files and I've been itching to give it a go myself.

It gets weird since to sell full on merch, you need to be pretty big to meet the costs and troubles, but while a certain niche might not be enough to fulfill that it doesn't mean it's not profitable. The donations, patreon, and the commission work notoriety brings on seem to be how people get by, but there's got to be a way to make the initial cartoons more profitable. More worth making outside of sheer passion.

I always kinda figured that something kinda like a rogue Netflix for animators would be the best option, though that's pretty much what Newgrounds could be at the apex of the supporter status work. But I think it needs more of a leap of faith in both animators and the consumer's part. We need animators and creators willing to pump their best into NG to get the supporter count up, and we need more supporters to drop cash to make it more appealing to creators.

So then it's like, what will it take to cross that gap? Building to it slowly is an option, but if either falter or suffer dry streaks it'll fuck up the balance, so a huge push of some kind seems needed. And no one's going to just drop cash out of no where, so I wonder what kinda stunt NG would have to pull to make the boom real. Or any platform that wants to start that sort of thing.

If I missed the point, or something in that long rant doesn't make sense I'll blame animating all day until 1am as my excuse.

P.S. It doesn't help that people think artists are greedy fucks for taking the money aspect into consideration. We just want to be able to afford living somewhere and eating maybe once a day so we can make more shit.

Emrox

Been thinking about this for a while. I think the big difference between netflix & newgrounds is that you aren't "unlocking" the site by paying for it, even though you're getting a better experience by donating. The plus side is that NG doesn't have to compete with piracy - everything is already free, but I feel like when you become a supporter you don't have a super clear idea of where that money goes or how it results in more content to enjoy.

That said, it's cool to see that so many people have enough faith in NG to donate. I wonder if we could get some artists to "donate" premium content for the paying people. It doesn't seem too unreasonable to me, seeing as the artists are the ones who really want the site to succeed.

TomFulp

I don't consider it destructive at all - I agree, despite there still being ads on NG. The ad model has always been bad and is only getting worse over time. I would love to ditch ads completely and run 100% from supporter subscriptions and occasional t-shirt sales.

I'm always holding out for a tipping point where supporter does well enough that we can just turn all our ad space into supporter promos (which we've already done with some of the ad spots, for registered users at least). I feel like if / when that happens, we'll just keep building bigger results. The NG budget will stay the same and the new rev-share pool will grow and grow, inspiring everyone old and new to get on the train. Until then, NG is like the Count of Monte Cristo, living in exile and working on self-improvement.

Imagine though how jacked NG would be if it had all the great features we're working on, a massive rev share pot AND wasn't beholden to a single investor or advertiser... That would be the true golden age / creative utopia any NG fan has ever hoped for. That's why this whole supporter thing HAS to work out, even if it takes a while.

Emrox (Updated )

Oh man I sure hope that all happens. Only prob I can see is if some people are supporters just to turn off ads, in which case they'd drop their subscriptions as soon as the site goes ad-free. Unless you want to fully replace ads with 30 second supporter promos and the like.

I literally just wrote this in response to PhantomArcade, but having you considered asking some of the higher-profile artists to donate premium content, seeing as so many of the fans are totally willing to donate money? It'd be cool to see if we could get some guys together to kickstart a premium content section on the site. And the launch would be hyped as fuuuuuuuck!

Oh wait that's the same thing as youtube red hahaha. That's why I like selling behind-the-scenes stuff - it doesn't really feel like you're withholding anything from your fans. Idk I'll let you figure out how your business works

Edit: it's weird that I wrote this whole post and I only just now remembered how NG got blacklisted by google- another example of how easy it is to get screwed by signing into someone else's money machine. It should be nice to not have to fight that one anymore!

Plebs

I have yet to run ads on my vids, but I also believe it's hardly worth it. I might still run them, only because people that get annoyed by them already have adblock anyway. So you'd basically only reach the people who might dislike ads, but are fine tolerating them. Whatever income remains can go back into the production of new animations. Would be nice to actually pay the people involved.

You know what I find funny about those blockades on sites like Forbes? It's them thinking it's actually going to make a difference. Telling people who use adblock that 'it's necessary to keep the lights on' is like telling someone that smoking is bad for their health. Pointing out the obvious, when really people just don't give a shit.

I also believe that supporting the artist directly through merch, donations and third party platforms like Patreon is currently the best way. However, I have a hunch that the latter won't last long either. The internet is a jungle filled with variables. I also believe you're right about just kicking out stuff that's made to your liking and not to whatever the preferences of the algorithm are. Ideally making something that's relevant decades from now is the goal.

Great post!

dylan

i'd been thinking about an ad-money vs gig-money post for a while, but i think you summed it all up perfectly in that third from last paragraph.

i don't personally think that patreon is a good way forward for the majority. it's such a niche-driven thing that it ends up relying on this "artists should support other artists" idea, which i really don't like. you'd get much more for your money by building some hippie commune of hobbyist animators.

it comes down to indie animation being such a niche art that you really can't expect an audience to exist that is large enough to support all the creators. for me, the best way forward seems to be use this incredibly niche talent we have to generate enough money through mainstream channels to produce our hobby works on the side.

what's that david lynch quote? he was being asked about product placement in films, he said something like "i do commercials - to make money." the quote was more about how there's no room for advertising in art, but it also shows that there's just not much money in what we make as hobbyists. making those ads will get you so much more money that showing them in a banner at the bottom of a video.

other than that, the only option would be artists collectively giving their trust to a site like newgrounds and offering something like exclusive content, but that collective-sense seems to fall apart whenever an individually-better option comes along. when animators first left for youtube, newgrounds lost its power to collectively bargain for its artists. then, to no one's surprise, youtube fucked the animators, and now the entirety of indieanimators and even newgrounds itself are struggling just because the community is so fractured.

imagine what newgrounds would be today without that first exodus - it'd likely still be a place to post and curate content, but i would imagine its money would come from repping the better artists that post here instead of ads. that's really what newgrounds needs to be. forget this patreonesque stuff, rep talented artists and use that income to fund the next generation of talented artists.

Yusuf

can't believe you removed "Sick NATA 20112 f;ash["

Cyberdevil

Thought you were going to talk about stocks and brokering though. :P Next post?

Regarding the ad-blocker splash message of some sites: I assume they earn money via CPV as well as CPC, ao as long you still view the ads they're getting money, albeit not as much, but maybe more so they're actually trying to get people to pay for a subscription, similar to NG, where avoiding ads seems like the best reason. A splash page like that is bound to show for a lot of users, too. But disregarding the Supporter thing for a moment, for CPV: the brands that pay this way probably assume that their image will stay etched on your retina anyway, and impact future sales/interactions even if users don't explicitly click. And I'll admit, it works, sometimes. A well-designed ad does pique my interest. I might not visit, buy, or even condone it, but the brand name will be stuck to me for a long time to come, and maybe a positive connotation with it.

Regarding the 10-minute standard making the "subscribe/next video" links irrelevant, curious how that'd work? Won't people always be looking for new content? Do you predict playlists will be automated; less control required...? And why ten minutes exactly? Might be some new standard development here I'm unaware of...

Regarding users donating exclusive content, it IS happening, sort of. See for example: https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1430352 ...and I know Deathink had a contest recently with a few poster give-aways for Supports especially. I'm happy some artists are taking such imitative, though it feels like not enough people know. Some collective bulletin for 'Supperter Exclusive Events' might be useful... I definitely feel like there's a lot of potential with a system like this, and with platforms like Patreon too, though it requires most people still make money the traditional way and bring it into this 'artist-to-artist' circle somehow. Wouldn't it be ideal if we could all just create and consume though - a creative worldwide self-feeding constantly inspired utopia. :) Doesn't seem like it'd ever work unless we get robots to farm, clear, gather resources; manage all those required background tasks for a sustainable social system... but we could do without some of the hierarchy, hypocrisy and corporate culture otherwise, I believe.

All in all a well-written post, and comments. Food for thought. Definitely interesting to see how marketing tactics change with time, and maybe figure out some miracle money-making ways via these observations...

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