5.1 Conclusions
Despite different media and platforms used by both types of free web content creators, the general set of activities and rules governing the business activity as a whole is very similar. It involves providing original content regularly for free, extensive use of social media in order to reach to the audience around the world, and conducting plenty of monetising activities in order to gain profit, based on the affection of the fan community formed around the project. The exact combination and scope of those can differ from case to case. It is also very much influenced by the status the creative venture has for the creator; whether it is a full-time job aspiration-driven project or a past-time aimed at self-progress, the author’s attitude will govern the willingness to carry on a certain set of activities.
Despite that, certain aspects of each media and their publishing platforms seem to significantly affect creators, in terms of managing their fan community.
While webcomic artist originally produces and publishes “off the grid” of social media, they have to be constantly active and involved in the life of their fan communities, drawing their attention, sharing stories and answering fans questions, letting them know they are still out there, working for new content.
Videos already exist within the social media platform, that is Youtube; they can be easily shared by fans and in some instances quickly become viral videos.
The special algorithm would recognise what content is popular and recommend more videos of the particular vlogger, drawing in potential new subscribers and
maybe wanting to be more involved in their fan community, might not be able (or not feel the need) to do so, due to a sudden rise in number of commenters and the pressure to create more content in order not to drown in the sea of similar creators on Youtube. Some successful Youtubers still retain a level of knowledge about the trends and demands of their audiences (such as TwoSet Violin, NikkieTutorials), others, especially those who already gained a lot of recognition, may venture too much outside Youtube and their activities might stop involve directly with the fandom (Try Guys). The extreme example of mismanaging fan community comes from the case of PewDiePie, the most subscribed Youtuber as of July 2019, who actually seems to have little to no control over his fan community . 7
The popularity within Youtube is much more dependent on day-to-day reliability than original content (Parkin, 2018), in order to stay on top of the Youtube listings. Webcomic creators must be regular, but they can give themselves more time and space to create, as long as they involve themselves in the fandom (i.e. Gregor Czaykowski and his Twitch videos).
The fan community is extremely important, because it gives back to the creator by purchasing their merchandise, supporting them on crowdfunding platforms, willingly carries out the “word-of-mouth”-type marketing, etc. It also provides criticism and feedback, so important for the creator to grow, as well as provides ideas and builds on the universum by co-creating certain elements, that may also become part of fan culture (such as memes or fan fiction). It’s the fan community that allows for certain monetising opportunities to arise, and being observant and reactive to it is crucial for success.
One must know how to maximise the profit from the monetising activities though; not only to gain direct profit but also to continue creating popular content, without losing its quality and appeal. The established idea, strong work ethic, strict but flexible schedule, as well as ability to gain in help from possible sponsors, all of those are crucial in creating a successful business plan, no matter how good the content is. Some creators might be able to apply all those variables into the perfect loop, propel it, and in effect become able to become full-time web content creators, hopefully doing what they love and be profitable off it.
It is extremely difficult though; according to “Creative Independent” survey of 2000 artists present on Kickstarter, 29% of respondents relied on family support and 42% relied on a day job to support themselves (“The Artists Making a Living (or Trying to) with Patreon”, n.d.). The level of skills in both creating artwork and building a fan following needs to be very high, this is also very much matter of luck and sheer persistency in creating what one loves to create.
5.2 Suggestions
The financial success as a free content creator who can sustain themselves in the long run is not easily achievable, though. Those who decide to create and share their content online for free, rarely can make any profit out of it. The majority of creators cannot reach the threshold of profitability or maintain it. That’s why more platforms such as Youtube or Kickstarter should exist in order to support those individual creators. Such services should be easily available and offer particular profits for independent creators, but should not be claiming too much control over
the content and should stay as one of the means to disseminate knowledge about the person’s creative work.
In the wake of new and upcoming technologies, it may be wise to try and foresee what kind of format of both content and merchandise would be most interesting to the audience. For example, the extensive use of smartphones influences new formats of apps, and so it can influence a new format of video or a comic strip. It is not a new idea; for example, the Korean-style webcomic (referred to as webtoon outside South Korea) in its current most popular form is usually drawn in a format of long vertical strips in order for it to be easily read on the phone screen (Han, 2012 ). Despite differences between webtoon and a Western style densely drawn panels, the smartphone-friendly format might actually become attractive to some comic artists. But whether a webcomic or a video channel, focusing on smartphone users market might allow creators to develop a new and original form of storytelling, which could also be promoted and monetised upon in a completely new way (Murray, 2017).
What would also push this creative industry forward is creating new ways of monetising content. From example, microtransactions might become more widely used. Creators might be interested in the format often applied by the visual model genre of the game apps: in most of them, stories are available in its entirety for free, but the daily access is restricted to certain number of chapters or tokens. For a small price, though, a user can buy more tokens and continue the story instantly.
As Jacques (2009) mentioned, people are not interested in paid content available online, but at the same time they might choose to pay a small fee in order to get a quicker access to the otherwise free content (this is already one of the profits of becoming a Patreon patron, but could be explored more extensively). Along with
the technological advancements of smartphone technology, further research might want to explore both the new possibilities and already existing ideas and formats in the context of monetising activities (especially the microtransaction technologies application) in the free web content context.
The research showed that the information about legal aspects of monetising activities sprouting from such business ventures is not easy to obtain. As our research has shown, there is a certain fixed set of activities a web content creator usually carries out, but the details on how to successfully make use of them are vague and differ from case to case. Thus, it would be advisable for the respective governments to publish a clear guide aimed at aspiring creators, in order for them to utilise their opportunities to the maximum in this small but clearly developing sector of creative industries. For example, the reason why Minna Sundberg does not have a Patreon account is because the law in Finland forbids direct donations in such manner (SSSScomic, 2015 [Tweeter conversation]). Such information can be crucial for creating a proper strategy.
5.3 Contribution
This research aimed to draw the most universal conclusion about how to maintain a successful creative project online, while also emphasising how different media and platforms might influence different approaches to creativity and gaining profits from it, especially from the perspective of managing fan communities.
Hopefully, it will help independent and ambitious online creators develop more successful and stable models, which would allow them to flourish and enrich the
opportunities for artistically inclined people are numerous, and the vast area of research should allow them to be able to put their talents to use, and be fairly compensated for sharing their creativity with the rest of the online community, and beyond.
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