I am having dinner tonight with an old friend whom I have not spoken
to at length or hung out with for a couple years. He is in the creative field (an illustrator). He does not follow social media
and new media as much as I am and I wanted to tell him about all of the
opportunities that are available, so I made this list. This is also
especially relevant to any striking Hollywood writers that might now turn to the web to make a living. This is relevant to filmmakers, musicians, writers, designers, visual artists, and analyst, and consultants.
So, here is my advice
(all from observation, none learned first hand) for all creatives who
are new to the Internet an need to know the key points success with the
web:
1. Give away what is free to make infinite copies as a way to get noticed. License some of it Under Creative Commons, and encourage your fans to remix these works. Example: Cory Doctorow's books, Ze Frank's online community.
2. Sell/license most of your works that are free to make infinite copies of, and when multiple parties can pay you multiple times for it. Examples: the preachings and teachings of Mike Masnick at Techdirt.
3. Sell (don't give away) the resources that are scare at a premium, regardless of the time they take to create (short amount or long amount of time).
4. Use social networking sites, blogs, podcasting, Twitter, blogsearch, and IM to stay in contact with fans. Use some of the ideas they suggest to you (the good ones, of course). Take the time to thank them individually and/or publicly. Meet with them in person if you can. Never poo-poo a fan's idea publicly. If you don't make time for these things, you limit your visibility to the market and it will be much harder for you to succeed. Examples: Ask A Ninja, Ze Frank.
5. Partner with a contemporary or friend using the these sames strategies and talk about each other in the social media space every once in a while. Example: the Chris Brogan/JeffPulver mojo combo.
6. Never get into any exclusive licensing deals for the brand you create, (unless it is no longer fun AND you can retire and live off the payout for rest of your life and/or you are ready to start your new venture). Never get into any exclusive licensing deals for ALL works you create.
7. When starting out, never order 100's of physical goods to resell. Use a service that makes one-off's on demand. example: use lulu.com
8. When you need to get work done that you cannot do and you cannot hire anyone or have no enthusiastic fans to do the work, partner with others at the same level but with different skills and cross promote each other. Example: almost all open source projects.
9. Take smart risks in areas where competitors will not. Break the rules. Break some laws. Be remarkable or don't bother (hat tip to SethGodin). Example: Jet Blue, YouTube, Perez Hilton
10. Try not to compete with others, try to work with them, differentiate, harmonize. Example: Nintendo Wii
11. When you are dead sure you know how to appeal to a niche in a big way, never fall under the pressure to compromise by trying to appeal to a broader audience. That spells mediocrity. Example: BoingBoing.net, Anti-example: G4TV.
12. If your dayjob is in the creative field or is interesting to a lot of people at any level, suggest to your company that you blog about the work of your company, publicly disclosing the name of the company. If and when you leave, you will take the personal brand you have built with you, and now you have more value in the market. Use your position to lead innovation in your area.
13. Be ready and willing to embrace an opportunity, market, strategy, audience, or demographic that you had not planned on or did not expect unless you are certain it will make you miserable. This means you don't have to plan to far ahead because there is no way you will know what is going to happen. Examples: Slide.com, RockYou.com, iLike.com who all jumped on the chance to make the first Facebook F8 apps and found success. Anti-example: Friendster who deleted fake profiles people were really having fun with (circa 2003) which drove users to MySpace.
14. Unless he or she is a social media superstar, never follow a lawyers advice against any of these guidelines. If this happens, the lawyer is thinking too much about his or her short term financial gain and not about your long term successes. Anti-example: RIAA, MPAA.
There is some talk of Fair Use reform to define it as: "work that adds to the value of the original, as opposed to substituting for the original, is fair use."
So, what are some examples of adding value? Let’s just throw some assumptions out there.
• Free redistribution against the author's will, aka "piracy": this is not even covered by Fair Use. It it can ad value, to the original work, but this thinking is at odd with most works' authors in todays' IP-sacred climate. It serves the undershot
customers of works.
• Derivative Works: depending on the nature of the use, it could add value.
• Parody: Parody is the use of a work to comment on something else.
This is usually protected under fair use, but does not necessary add
value to the work.
Value flows in two directions between these 4 entities:
• Original Works’ Authors
• Original Works
• Derivative Works’ (licensed or unauthorized) Authors
• Derivative Works (licensed or unauthorized)
The problem arises when one profits form another and that is viewed as unfair. And fairness as seen in a reproducible psychological experiment called the ultimatum game, the need for fairness and entitlement makes for illogical business decisions.
Original Authors Add Value to their Original Works and vice versa
This example is pretty simple. The author creates the work, the work
has value. If the work becomes popular, it is attributed back to the
author. If the work is bad, the author’s value may decrease. If the
author is obscure, it may not matter. Steven King’s great books helped
to make him valuable in the book publishing market. And when he
releases a new book, people take notice.
Original Authors and their Original Works Add Value to Derivative Authors and their Derivative Works’ and vice versa
The originator’s work can create a value network for his or her works, and the works of others. Suzann Vega’s song “Tom’s Diner” was originally an acapella. It was then remixed without permission by DNA Disciples, adding cache to Susan Vega as an artist.
Conversely, when someone crates a new art form (such as the remix),
others benefit by being successful in that art form. In other words,
the network effects of the many can raise the status of a few.
Mashup artist Girl Talk samples as many as 20 songs into a single 3-minute song. These mashups may remind people of the original authors who are valued because of the original works, and they may wish to listen to or even purchase the originals. Girl Talk’s innovative approached helped to spotlight himself and his "illegal art" (since no licensing was obtained and is therefore only available for free via p2p networks).
Derivative Authors Add Value to their Derivative Works, and vice versa
This is the situation that Original authors view as unfair, and causes
all kinds of conflicts. In order to exercises this option, it must be:
• created illegally, by using works that are copy written and without getting permission
• created by obtaining permission and licensing in an “any use is commercial use” assumption
• created by using works that are in the public domain
• created using works in a way in which its Creative Commons license permits.
There is a great experiment going on by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. He as started the Nine Inch Nails Remix community
where fans can download multi track versions of songs, create a remix,
and then upload the remixes for fans to listen to and download. Most of
the tracks from the last album are available as multiple tracks from
the site, but some are available on the recently released remix album.
So, eager remixers must buy this album to get access to remixing some
of these other tracks. The community can rate and aggregate mixes,
spotlighting the best remixes, each who has their own profile, similar
to a social networking site.
Derivative Authors and their Derivative Works Add Value to Original Works
No matter which one of the scenarios listed above is in play, this type
of value creation may occur. Famous original paintings are worth as
much as they are partly because of reprints and photographs that pay
homage to them. Even within the range of a single artist, some
paintings are worth more than others not only because they are higher
quality or more esthetically pleasing, but because these traits are a
reason for their reproductions, and because people see the
reproductions, the value of the original increases. This was especially
the case prior to copyright regimes. This lead to the spread of the
bible and helped to spur the print industry at the time of the
invention of the printing press.
