Louis CK is a pretty well-known comedian. And honestly, one of my favorites. 
And he’s been generating some online news lately because of his sale of Live at the Beacon Theater. He produced it himself and took the sale directly to the Internet for $5/pop. And, as he said:
No DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever.
In 12 days, his sale brought in over a million dollars. He even posted his Paypal account:
People have been discussing this. Some are happy for him and cheer him on due to his socking it to the RIAA-types and proving that you CAN make a bunch of money with entertainment without going through some huge distribution company. Others, however, have been getting snotty and saying that he could only do this because he’s Louis CK.
Where does this leave less famous artists? Could the same be done?
First of all, Louis paid $32,000 for the website. Which is amazing when you consider what a piece of crap it is. Unless there was a lot of backend stuff being done that isn’t publicly visible, he got taken to the cleaners by his web company. I’ve got a guide right here that would allow you to make a MUCH better website for less than about $20 and a little bit of your time.
He used Paypal as his payment system on his site. Anybody can do that, too. You might need a business account, but still, anybody can do it.
Which leaves production costs. Louis paid $170K for production of the video. That’s a HUGE pile of money. Of course, it was also a full production (six cameras) in the Beacon Theater. Likely with unionized staff, too, which costs a great deal more and you’re basically forced to use them. So, yeah, that kind of thing is going to cost some scratch.
But, is that kind of production necessary? No, it isn’t. I’ve seen a lot of artists and musicians feature their stuff on Youtube. It is good stuff, shot on a single camera, but with good audio. So, use a decent camcorder and some decent video production software, one could easily put something together for a LOT cheaper than $170K. Hell, even a multi-camera setup could be done without too much hassle.
And that brings us to marketing.
Without a doubt, Louis CK’s fame helped to a great degree. It gave him a huge jump start when it comes to the marketing.
From there, a big part of the success was the WAY it was marketed. Specifically, the “sock it to the man” mentality of specifically talking about this being DRM-free. There are a LOT of people online who would gladly pay good artists small sums of money for DRM-free content. And, when that idea is used to mobilize people, then the sale becomes as much a movement as it does just people wanting the $5 video. It was this movement that led the sale to be covered on many of the major tech sites.
Louis also got out there and conversed and promoted alot. For example, he had one HELL of a conversation going on over on Reddit. He promoted with a snippet of the video posted on Youtube (which went viral, of course).
So, could a less-famous artist do the same? Yes.
- Produce your own website or pay somebody to do it. These days, it was super-easy and FAST to set up a nice-looking website. The days of paying out thousands of dollars for something as simplistic as what Louis has are over… unless you just don’t know any better. Self-sell the stuff without a middle-man for distribution. It just isn’t necessary.
- Produce great content people actually WANT. Louis is a master at this, but any decent artist should be as well.
- Get out there and be social. Use Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Google Plus – whatever. It’ll be more work than it was for Louis CK (because, well, he’s famous), but some creativity will do it for you.
- Tie into the DRM-free movement. Not only are they getting your cool stuff, but they’ll also feel they are socking it to a common enemy. That hits people on an emotional level. The same feeling people get when they donate to a political campaign, for instance.
And, even if you don’t bring in a million dollars, I’m sure you could still make some money. See, all this technology stuff CAN pay the bills!
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
