Missing the Boat
I’ve been in talks recently with advertisers interested in placing advertising on Kitkast. While one of the things people love about videoblogs is the fact that they don’t contain any advertisements (yet), people also have to understand how difficult it is to make a free programme of this magnitude voluntarily.
Many vloggers, themselves, even oppose advertising on their videoblogs since they believe that vlogging is a creative medium that should not submit to the same guidelines as television programming. While I understand their fears, not everyone feels the same way.
When it comes to Kitkast, it’s undoubtably a full time job. I work about 35 hours a week at my day job and Kitkast takes up another 25 hours a week (not counting the time it takes to respond to individual e-mails). As a result, I don’t have a lot of time for the simple things in life like doing my laundry, grocery shopping, watching television and going to the bank (I have two monthly paychecks in my wallet yet to be deposited and any other cash I have is money lent to me by my boyfriend!).
If this isn’t a good reason to incorporate and sell short adspace on Kitkast, I don’t know what is.
Although I never posted it here, my New Year’s resolution was to quit my job. I haven’t done this yet, however, because I am a level-headed individual and recognize the importance of a regular paycheck. In order to quit my job, I have decided that I need to be making enough money from Kitkast to live by, but how can I take the time to set up advertising when I don’t even have enough time in my day to go to the bank? [What came first, the chicken or the egg?]
Over the past few weeks I’ve been bursting with great ideas for a money-making side project related to videoblogging… something that would not only benefit Kitkast, but also my other compadres who also have their own videoblogs. Unfortunately, Zod discovered last night that Plan A was already being set up by someone else.
Plan B was a much simpler idea. After reading about the success of the Million Dollar Homepage and the quirky ebay auctions that I’ve seen recently (ie. Rocket Scientist seeking employment), I thought about how easy it is to create publicity by selling something different on eBay. As a result, I realized that selling Kitkast adspace on eBay would not only provide me with some well-needed money to quit my job and start devoting myself to working full time on Kitkast, but it would also be a publicity stunt that would not go unnoticed by the mainstream media.
However, after being reminded of my problems with eBay’s affiliated payment company and of the adult business that was removed from the auction site, I realized that it would be an uphill battle to try and sell Kitkast’s sexy adspace there. Another reason I hesitated on Plan B was because I wanted to tell my parents about Kitkast before landing myself on the cover of any major newspaper or magazine.
Well, it looks like I’ve missed the boat on Plan B as well. This morning when I got in to work I checked the Yahoo Videoblogging Group, as usual, and noticed that the vlogging moguls at Rocketboom have decided to auction advertising time for their show on eBay. [Link to auction.]
Well, I guess it’s onto Plan C then…
January 30th, 2006 at 3:12 pm
Have you ever herd of cockybastard?
Or Halcyon.
Dude has been online since forever.
Now he is into porn, and promoting it and links and clicks and love and anything that has pink on it.
He might be able to help with with some advertisment stuff.
But really.. Rocketboom is never going to touch this! Its Taboo. ANd finding money/advertising in the porn industry seems like an easy thing to do.
Meaning you have a nitch.
How about setting up deal with another site.
You review a movie.
And if you like it you promote it.
signed. passerby
January 30th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
Kitka,
I’ve read a few articles mentioning that product placement is making a comeback now that DVRs are becoming a hot item and digerati are using said technology to skip advertisements.
I predict that blogs will start to lose advertisement steam as well as tools like adblock [http://adblock.mozdev.org] and no-script [http://www.noscript.net] filter advertisements from actual data before it reaches the user.
That said rather than ‘commercials’ in video blogs I would suggest more subtle advertisement methods that still could generate revenue without assaulting the fan base. For example you could wear your sexy outfits that show clearly a company logo as a advertisement. Or you could have a ‘wardrobe provided’ by tag at the end of an episode as an advertisement.
Other ideas involve reviewing products, strip clubs, and films as mentioned before which offer not only revenue but also inform viewers to good products.
Although I would love to see content provided freely without advertisements I understand this is often impossible for high quality content due to the cost [in time and dollars] to produce such content. I still believe there are subtle ways to advertising that can be remarkably creative and profitable.
[Think of all the things that can add visual appeal to Kitkast while at the same time being advertisements. There are almost limitless possibilities. Assuming you could convince businesses it’ll be worthwhile.]