Words    Words    Words

In response to our last business model post, Norgg asks an important question — why should an artist offer their own content for download on their lonely web page when they can be part of a much larger content distribution system like CDBaby (for musicians) or Lulu (for writers). This question is actually important not [...]

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Wave 1
Wave 0 was our pre-launch wave. Although the Continuous Coast project is accepting donations from the start, Wave 0 is mostly about collecting early-adopter fans and beginning a viral word of mouth campaign which we can build on later. In Wave 1, we will be launching the central portal to the site and offering [...]

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You hear a lot of talk these days about finding your niche market. Many of the current business models rely on various layers of middlemen to facilitate the flow between artist and audience. The current trend in online creative business seems to be toward bypassing the middle-management layer and delivering the product or [...]

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Yesterday we talked in more detail about monetary donations and how to distribute them in your project. What about your fans who don’t have enough money to contribute directly, either through donations or the other revenue streams we’ll detail later? These fans can still contribute positively to your project — in addition to raw traffic, [...]

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So you have your unruly mass of contributors, and a pool of general donations, now what do you do? Any time you set up a system where the central creative committee is saying “one contribution is worth more than another contribution” in some form, you are likely to have problems with hurt feelings among [...]

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There were a few questions we left unanswered yesterday that we’ll look at again today in more depth, though we don’t promise not to leave you with different questions at the end. Donations received by a single artist working on a single project are easy to allocate. The potential for complication rises swiftly when you [...]

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Wave 0 (Pre-launch phase)
Yesterday we discussed the organization of our business model into waves. Wave 0 is our pre-launch phase, when we encourage early adopters to visit our sites and become involved with our project. We hope to capitalize on the prestige of being the first to be “in the know” about our project by [...]

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For this paper, we chose to present the different potential income streams in the same format we are using for Continuous Coast, the project which grew alongside (and was informed by) our business model research. We provide specific examples and links where possible, and encourage you to modify the information here as best fits [...]

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There are at least three other points worth considering when developing your artistic business model. First, don’t forget the time vs money investment question. Some projects require a large investment of time, some of money, and some of both. To a reasonable degree they can be interchangeable (though not entirely); you can [...]

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If you’ve been reading along so far and practicing the suggestions, you now have a pile of recorded observations and information relevant to the business model portion of your project. To turn your collected data into something more sensical, consider these simple steps recommended by our consultants:

Prioritize the steps you need to take to [...]

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