Announcing Contest Winners!
from the giving-away-cash dept
As you may recall, over the last couple months we ran two separate contests, in which we are giving away $11,000 in $1,000 chunks. Today we're announcing all the winners. The first was our PSA contest, where we asked people to create short PSA videos about the impact of technology on creativity. For that one, congrats to Joshua Rodriguez, who made an entertaining video that actually lays out both the "pro" and "con" arguments for how infringement is impacting creativity:The second contest was for submitting case studies on our new Step2 platform for helping people create "success models." Somewhat surprisingly, we didn't even get submissions in every category, so we're giving $1,000 each to the overall 10 best case studies that got submitted -- per user voting. Here's the list in order of user votes:
- Can transparency give fans a reason to buy?: Andy Richard's great discussion showing how being more transparent with revenue details with his fans seemed to give fans more of a reason to buy.
- Cucumbers & Gin - a film of a violin piece: Kevin Clark's story about using Kickstarter to finance a music video also explained how success is judged in more ways than just money.
- Does making your pond smaller work to make you a bigger fish?: Zoe Keating's explanation of "what's worked for her" in building up such a huge fanbase and a truly "DIY" success story as an independent musician.
- What are some infinite goods that a maker of physical objects could give away?: Kyle Clements flips the equation for us a bit, and tries to get people thinking about infinite goods that can be used to promote the kind of physical artwork he does.
- Married Man Sex Life: The Marketing Plan: Author Athol Kay discusses the marketing strategy for his book, and then goes on in the comments to give us play by play updates as he experiments and tries different pricing strategies.
- Kickstarter: Does It Even Matter What You Sell?: Amanda Palmer's case study about the success of her Kickstarter campaign, in which she notes that true fans will figure out ways to support you, no matter what you sell.
- Building Your Film's Fanbase... The Hard Way: Will Robertson's discussion of how he and others hustled their way around the country promoting and showing the horror film they made.
- Bodies on the Floor: Improving Show Attendence: Matthew Bile's excellent case study on how his band was able to build their fan base and get more people out to their shows.
- Social-Networking Do's and Don't's...know your fans to keep your fans!: Katey Laruel's discussion of how to connect (and how not to connect) with fans via social networking.
- Ways to grow a non-artistic content provider Michael Lato discusses his series of YouTube videos for DIY home construction projects.
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Filed Under: business models, case studies, contest, psa, step2
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"there's lots more going on over at Step2"?
And just look at the wild response here! 3 hours, and I can take my time and probably still be first.
Absolutely proves you've nothing more than the question marks in "STEP 2: ?????". -- Even after this "contest" and $11000, that's all you've got! Money well spent, eh?
I'm sort of amazed that you could stretch any standard to come up with 10 "winners". You almost wrote more above outlining them than is present.
Think the most generous I can be is advise that you really need to give your notions a re-think from ground up. You may conclude, as I have, that the gate-keepers have a lock on the "means of production"...
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Re: "there's lots more going on over at Step2"?
Some new-business-model projects fail outright. Others, like Step2, have meager success, false starts, or take a while to catch on (we don't know which of those this project is, yet). That's part of how capitalism works. Not everything is going to make your much-beloved $100 million right off the bat. That doesn't mean people should stop trying new things, stop embracing the possibilities the Internet has to offer, give up and go home.
The "notions" are fine. Applying arbitrary Blue-style standards to specific examples proves nothing at all.
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So eh, Joshua is just awesome. I agree with him and the video is pretty pleasant to watch (dunno, he has a way of expressing himself with gestures, body and faces that is nice). He does speak quite fast so it was a tad harder for me not being natural from an English speaking country. May I suggest using the 'infinite' Youtube capacity (the horror, free content!) to post a few more of the videos sent?
As for the rest, I did read a few that looked interesting and definitely "Does making your pond smaller work to make you a bigger fish?" caught my attention. It's a pleasant and insightful read and I'd say that it works for almost everything that requires social interaction. Way to go.
I'll stop here or my comment will take Biblical proportions (long).
So ootb, we do know you keep your head stuck into your ass but it's good to come out an breath sometimes. You know, lack of oxygen isn't good for the brain.
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Hmm? You are on here nearly every day screaming about how we're trying to destroy artists, and here we are giving away $11,000 while helping artists figure out better ways to thrive. How, um, is that a flop, epic or otherwise?
I'm beginning to sense that your MO is just to state the opposite of reality.
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On other threads you demand to know what the new business model is (despite numerous examples being shown and the fact that there isn't 1 being emphasised) and yet here you bitch about the people who are out there talking about and trying out the new models?
What gives? I really don't understand what drives you here to make comments like that.
You're not even criticising, you're just ranting; it's barely rational behaviour.
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