Subscriptions: The Secret to a Sustainable Web Series? http://tinyurl.com/6jz8k5s
As we all wonder how we’re going to fund our production jobs, the independent series Venice (spun out of Guiding Light as it turns out) ultimately decided to fund the $60K per season budget by charging a subscription of $10 a season.
While the 50-60 people working on a season do get paid, they all have “day jobs” between the limited income from the series.
The total cast and crew for a season ranges in the 50-60 person range, but Venice isn’t paying anyone’s rent year-round. Everyone has day jobs, including Chappell, who has returned to Days of Their Lives as Carly Manning. But things are looking good for Season Three, which is currently in pre-production and may include, among other things, an all-musical episode with original music. “If we can cover expenses and have rollover for season four, that’s fantastic,†Chappell said.
Currently, subscription fees cover at least 80 percent of the show’s $60,000-plus budget per season, Chappell says, with merchandise sales and product placement making up the remaining amount. And for many of those subscribers, especially the daytime soap fans, this is their first time watching web content.
It would have been much easier for them to sell the season via klickTab.com via a standard RSS feed and save on all that tech support expense:
This has made tech support a must, with the five-person IT staff working overtime to help users who have lost passwords or are having problems using the site,
There’s not tech support issue with klickTab – if you can subscribe to a podcast, you can subscribe to a klickTab feed. And yes, I helped develop klickTab.