The single most important aspect in building a lasting business online, is a
fan or customer list! You have to be able to contact people, who like your
work, have bought a DVD once and especially those who buy everything
you produce. Without such a list, you would have to find your audience
over and over again for every new project. Expand it constantly with new
projects, articles or videos and you will gather a sizeable following over the
years.
Similar to a demo experience of computer games, you offer free content to
give interested visitors a chance to find out if they like your work. If you
present fantastic work, some people will want to have more! Provide
premium content in exchange for their Email address.
A rule of thumb is that premium content should at least be twice as
valuable as your free introduction content. For example if you are showing
a trailer for free, offer a high resolution premium download of the whole
movie. If you put the whole film online for free, record a couple of video
tutorials and explain a special technique your film uses. If you give away
ninety percent of the film for free and just offer a few dull extras in
exchange for the email address, the worth of your offer is questionable and
it won't lead to the desired outcome.
Similar to hosting your home base, MySpace and Co. offer many
advantages when collecting your fan list. Yet again if your account is being
deleted or MySpace goes bankrupt, the base of your business is lost.
Making friends and fans on social networks is important, but your focus
should lie on a communication channel you can control entirely.
Perhaps, you feel uncomfortable for asking visitors to supply their Email
addresses. Every day spam mails, boring newsletters and unwanted offers
fill up your inbox. You rarely give your address away anymore. But in which
case do you give it away gladly? Maybe there is a great offer you have
been searching for a long time. It really fits your desires and can enrich
your life. When you create valuable content for your audience, you can ask
for something in return! The small barrier of having to enter an Email
address leads to a list of people, who really appreciate your work. This is a
good foundation for a long lasting relationship.
It goes without saying that you may not abuse your customer database. Let
people know what is going on in your filmmaker life. Where can they meet
you? Where can they watch your movies? Is there a new film or a new
product?
To attract more people, you may implement additional communication
channels. RSS feeds have been very popular for some time now. People
don't have to enter their Email on your website. If you add new content to
your site, the subscribers automatically receive updates and may read
them in an RSS reader. With Feedburner
- a free service by Google - you can manage feeds and access usage data.
You can implement a fan list with Email-input-field in different ways. For
your Wordpress blog there are newsletter plugins and for your HTML
website you will find free newsletter PHP scripts. Managing a large list with
several sublists can become very time-consuming. If you earn a living with
your online presence it might pay off to use a service with costs, such as
Aweber or Constant Contact.
