Viral Marketing Fluke
As I’m working to try and figure out how to be self employed and try to make money from the internet, here’s another example of viral marketing that really didn’t mean to be viral marketing.  The difference between this one and the one I wrote about earlier is that this video was not created to market anything, it was a fun video that caught fire on the internet.
In the above video, a Minnesota couple enter the church dancing to the Chris Brown song “Forever”. They just did it for fun.  They posted it on YouTube, and the video got VERY popular.  It was passed all over the internet.  So YouTube posted links to buy the Chris Brown song on iTunes and Amazon and they started to advertise on the video page. The song was originally released on April 22, 2008 and had, for all intents and purposes, completed it’s life cycle.  With the 24 million views in just a few weeks on YouTube, Chris Brown’s song went to #4 on iTunes and this video revitalized the market for the song.  What about copyright?  Well, YouTube doesn’t have to pull the video under safe harbor until the owner of the content says to pull it.  Chris Brown’s managers were smart enough to ride this successful video and they had a surge of profits.  The downside is that the video creator gets no benefit from it, BUT, if they were a partner with YouTube, they could have taken advantage of some profit sharing.
The moral of the story is to put things up on YouTube with a plan in mind. Â The comedy site College Humor has made a sequel video called the “Divorce Video”, but it’s just not the original. Â I need to start working up some ideas of my own.
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Your people should call my people – just kidding, I have no people. Anyway, posted a couple time before on here, but finally using my name instead of an alias 😉 Yeah, I’ve been playing around with stuff – seems like it’s all about being in the right place at the right time. Guess you just have to make yourself available for those encounters. By the way, love your animation on the clone wars over in the flash portion. Did you use Anime Studio? Looks similar in some regards to what I’ve been working with.
Oh yes, and try istock if you’re looking for some extra income. Takes a while to build a portfolio, but you can pull in a bit. Especially with your talent. If you do happen over there, tell them Tridus sent you 😀
But would love to chat about ideas – sometimes I feel artists would be a lot more successful if they networked or worked together on projects more.
Hey Matt, sorry if I your posts didn’t make it through before.
The clone wars animations that I did on my old Flash site were all done in Flash. I haven’t ever used Anime Studio, but it seems pretty cool. I’m wondering if the new After Effects and the bones in the new Flash are suitable replacements for Anime Studio.
So are you talking about iStockphotos? I haven’t been to that site in awhile so I checked it out. I looks like illustrators can submit images to them and then get paid when people download their images. Pretty interesting. Does it take awhile to build up a fan base? Are you over there?
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_search.php?action=file&userID=976759
The above link should take you to my portfolio (Tridus). I’ve been on there a couple years now – so some of my work is from when I was at the ground floor of using illustrator.
The process to become an istock illustrator (or videographer/ photographer) is pretty easy. If you are an exclusive photographer or illustrator, you make a little more on royalty, but you don’t have to be exclusive. I know some artists don’t like the thought working for a giant like this, but I’ve been able to make a nice little rainy day fund off it. Pretty much from day one you can start earning royalty, as there seems to be a surprising amount of people searching for stock items. I’ve even met a couple of freelance clients through istock, as they liked some of my work and wanted me to create something else for them. I tried shutterstock too, but wasn’t as impressed and eventually took my stuff down on that one.
Like I said, you’re very talented, and would likely create the kind of art that people would love.