Web Fiction Guide Forums | General Chat
Creative Monetization
What kinds of interesting experiments have you tried in terms of ways to monetize your web fiction?
I've seen some ideas floated out there, especially regarding serials. I know people have tried requiring a set donation amount before the next chapter gets posted, or using donations to accelerate the posting schedule, and things like that... What's worked for you, and what hasn't?
This week I ran a couple of experiments with selling the right to name/create characters for me, and it's been successful so far. I seem to be very lucky, because I don't necessarily have a huge audience, but they appear quite willing to invest in me, which is awesome.
I sold the right to create a character, including name + special ability, for Special People, for $5, and it got snapped up in under 10 minutes.
Then I put out a novelette yesterday, with special offers to buy the right to name a minor or major character in the novel I'm working on set in the same world as the novelette. I made three minor characters available for $4.99 each, and one major character for $19.99. So far one minor character and the major character have sold. (When they bought the rights they also got a copy of the novelette.)
So I guess this thread is a partial triumph story, and a partial call for sharing your experiences. What kinds of special ways have you monetized your web fiction or online fiction sales?
http://specialpeople.timsevenhuysen.com
Responses
Posted 2 weeks ago
Hi,
I'm still very new in the whole "web novel" thing and am still just trying to put my stuff together with my co-author. Our website is out there and we have a few ideas we want to try for funding it...
A) Merchandise (generic) : Cafepress and other print on demand service make it easy to create merchandise with Logo, Images and text straight from the novel to whatever people might like (T-shirts, cups, books... name it)
B) Publicity : Let's agree, it doesn't pay much but it's still a way
C) Merchandise (special) : Our webnovel is all about steampunk... And Steampunk means Inventions, gadgets and very cool victorian inspired clothing and accessories. In the next year or so, we are planning to design and put together steampunk pieces directly inspired from our Web novel. I am still in a study of how we are going to do this. On one side we can do "unique" pieces straight from our crafty hands, an other option is to take other artist work in consignement and then an other option is to mix the two first option and also add a "reproduction" option where we would use a 3D printer to create "plastic" copy of some objects and gadgets. (That whole project IS big and require a lot of thinking and planning)
I have a few more ideas for potential income but they are still very foggy and are mostly to try to increase or keep readers around and encourage them to participate in our "world" one way or an other....
Maybe it can help to say that I have a background as a Storyteller for LARP and RPGs, our project is centre on our novel but one of the most important component is our Wiki/Encyclopedia we are building as we write our story as to make our world something way larger then what you see in the story itself and so usable for games and RPGs.
I do like the trick you gave about selling character names and things like that, I will keep the in mind the next time we start creating more characters. :)
Thanks!
Ryphna
Posted 2 weeks ago
Only thing that's worked for me is selling the darned books.
I've never made the minimum payout for any of the merch sites I've used. I've never made more that $20 from donations for a year. I've never made more than $10 in a year selling ads on my site.
But I've made enough money selling ebooks that I quit my day job in December. I've been publishing my stuff since June of 2009, and I have twenty or so titles available for sale (some novels, some novellas, some short stories). If you can serialize, you can write fast. Which means there's no reason not to bundle those chapters and put them up for sale on Amazon and Smashwords. I think if you use Pandamian, it'll even format it all for you.
Posted 2 weeks ago
VJ: I noticed your first Azazel novel at first (I think) in the free books list. I'm assuming making the first book free and having them paying for the rest is working pretty well for you.
My Blog (Jim's Brain Online)
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