This post was prompted by tweet I saw from @livingspiritpix "Should we charge for our work or give away free to create a following?" Or words close to that. Thought I would put my two cents in because I give my film for free.

My opinion is based on micro budget diy movies that are aiming for direct to market. Giving away digital downloads

Hundreds of millions of us use websites that help us connect, promote, show our videos, organise, share. Most of these platforms are free. This blog site here is free, and the tweet that got you here is obviously free.

These companies spend tens of millions worth of investment into these businesses, but many don't try to monetise for YEARS. They are patient, and that's one of the essential traits a filmmaker should have. Passion and patience.

Mark Zuckerberg was never in a race to make money, he has always had the focus to grow his company. Many of these giant companies were obviously community building with free. Once that community is built, then they can obviously monetise in many ways. Mainly advertising of course.

OK, filmmaking is different, and we are talking on a much smaller scale here, but if you are trying to diy direct to an audience, you won't be successful without some sort of community building. This is obviously to cultivate potential supporters, fans.

I'm no expert on this, but after learning from other forms of business, case studies, and my own experiments, it's really not rocket science. It is kind of obvious what we need to do, but I see many filmmakers who don't want to wake up to this. Many don't get FREE!

I agree with Topsin. Section from their site below. This applies to music but makes same point. Topsin are also letting filmmakers sign up to their service from next month.

You are NOT in the $0.99 download business. In fact, I’d go so far as to say you should never sell a $0.99 download from your web site. A fan connection is worth far more than $0.99, and I’d much rather convert a large number of people into lasting and meaningful relationships than make a few dollars on a digital download.

The reason is, the average revenue per transaction across everything Topspin has sold to-date is $26. When you look at optimized campaigns, what you might call the typical Topspin campaign, you find yourself in the $50-60 range. Add tickets to the campaign and you start to approach $90.

When it comes to direct-to-fan sales from my web site, I would much rather build fan connections and push higher value transactions than drive people to a $0.99 download. 

I have to agree with this because I have put it into practise. I plugged a streaming video player months ago, then I plugged FREE downloads. 95% of more people responded to the free, and they are now on my mail list. Does that mean they will buy from me? Like I said, my main goal is not to monetise at this time, but build an audience, share my experience, process, let them see my future plans, work.

Some have bought DVD's, Flash drive bullets, which is cool as small sales keeping me ticking over. My point is, I am in this for the long term, so I would rather attract more potential fans, supporters for the next projects this way. The figures did not add up to do it the other way.

We see "rent or buy" my film a lot. Why would I do that if I don't know your work, unless the trailer is outstanding, but most are not. Hey, that goes for my film too, but watch this space in the near future. If my work is FREE! There's far more incentive to check my work out.

Lets not bullshit ourselves that all our twitter and FB connections are fans. Fans are built over a long period of time if people really like your body of work, or believe in what you are doing. It also helps if we involve our supporters in the process, give them incentives, which I plan to do with all my next projects. It will never just be "buy my film"

When you get REAL fans, some will love your work, or some might be more interested in the person if they are inspiring. Or both. If we are really trying to build a potential fan base community, then that takes time. It took our past generations years to build businesses. Today, we want to be in profit in 24 hours!

I mean what do a lot of diy micro budget filmmakers do?  We make a small movie, don't spend much on marketing, and then we expect to monetise right away!  Completely ignoring the fact that we are in the same arena as $200m movies!

We don't have to earn anywhere near what the main indies or majors do to substain ourselves, but we can't survive and grow on a few $2 downloads or streams a day for years. If you only ever want to make films as a hobby for the rest of your life, make them for nothing and share with the world.

Trying to seriously monetise right away is doomed to fail!  Unless you have 2m twitter followers, or tens of thousands on a mail list. Which will only come if you had success in the mainstream film industry. Or you have been plugging at it online for several years. Or because you have created some great viral campaign, or transmedia buzz.

If you have money to spend on diy, you get out there, go on tours, build an audience faster. But if you are only uploading a flick to the web, then plugging it, blogging, sharing, you are more likely to get a bigger audience with FREE!

I made my film so cheaply so that I could afford to experiment with it, give it away for free. It wasn't made to take around the world, or to try and do deals at festivals, as it literally cost £2,500 to shoot and post.

If I had raised tens of thousands of pounds from investors, then I would have chopped the budget up to cover production, post, delivery, and marketing and distribution costs. I would have either went to festivals to see potential buyers, or do a small diy self distribution tour.

Like I said, that tour would have helped to grow a community faster. But that takes some cash. Thats my next stage when I make a diy film, but MIssion X was purely to get my spirit back for being a filmmaker.

I wanted to use the new technology to just jam with it. It was NEVER about money. If you're motivated in this business to make money, give it up now. Sure I need to make money to live and make movies, but first and foremost I have the geek drive and passion to tell stories.

If you really develop your TALENT, SKILLS, and EVOLVE at what you do, that attracts MONEY. That attracts JOB OFFERS. It attracts, FANS! Wanting to be GREAT at what you do will be rewarded over time.

If we try to monetise in a big way from our student like films, if we scream about piracy on the micro budget level , we are fucked! We should be EMBRACING it. You should be ecstatic that somebody will spend 90 mins of their time to watch a movie they have never heard of, made by a filmmaker they have never heard of. That might create a FAN

Like I said in a previous blog, hobby filmmaking is great to learn, build an audience. Forget about money, success, fame. That pursuit kills any hope of you ever being great or successful.

Wanting to make money right away with your creative talents has always been insane to me, because I could earn more money working in an office at the moment.But doing this, getting industry interest, slowly building POTENTIAL fans for diy too, can possibly lead to a life where I could earn from my creativity over the next few years. Until then, my film can be watched for FREE!

So how do we earn, substain ourselves until we maybe build a fanbase, get industry work too? Do what Coppola said, "filmmakers should also have day jobs!" I couldn't have made MIssion X without a day job. Although when you want to paint on a bigger canvas, like I do now, that needs more money. One ladder at a time.

We can also crowd fund new projects, trips to attract finance, hustle, get sponsorships etc. If people think we could be the next big noise, then of course, sell your other exclusive limited editions physical content too to keep ticking over. But I don't think we should try to monetise from our digital downloads just to earn a couple of bucks. 

Like I said, the very fact that somebody is taking 90 minutes of their time to watch my movie blows me away. In a world with so much content. Does this mean my content is not worth $$, compared to a lot of Hollywood content? No!

But I don't bullshit myself. There's no heat on me yet. If paramount picked up my little MX movie "Paranormal Activity" style and got behind it, hyped it, people are far more willing to pay to see it. It's got a gloss, huge stamp of approval on it.

I am not comparing my movie to Paranormal Activity, but lets be honest, if most of us only saw it on some dudes website, "Ohhh, a haunted house flick, what's new about that!" You wouldn't pay for it!

Without that heat, people are doing me a favour checking my work out. And if 50% become potential fans, they are my future! And they will get the best perks for that loyalty, support over time. Even if I also get success in the mainstream industry.

There's a lot of talk and excitement about the Dynamo streaming player recently. Link below. I think the dynamo streaming playing is excellent. Its been called a game changer. I don't fully agree there. It's a great tool, but tools are still only tools.

My approach to really using this is when I already have 10,000 or more true fans who are waiting to get the first preview before anybody else. I have no doubt that they would then fork out a few bucks to see it first, AFTER I have put sweat into building a body of work. That's when these players will really be great for us. Until then, my film is for FREE when it comes to an online digital file.

If you want my film for FREE! Get it here. I won't spam you. :)

Sign up if you also want to see how I approach the making, whole post, and marketing of my next film. You will get exclusive free access to daily videos via a password protected blog when I start the next project.

PS. If you want my views on piracy, check out my other blog post here. Case studies I am learning from others.

If you want to know more about the dynamo streaming player, check here, or chris jones blog that prompted this post.

Video about connecting with fans to give them a reason to buy. Cases studies of earners who give for free.

Public Knowledge points us to a wonderful short clip of Neil Gaiman, being interviewed by the Open Rights Group, explaining how he has completely changed his mind about "piracy" and copyright:

He admits that early on, when he saw his works "pirated" on the web, it made him quite upset. At first, he (totally incorrectly) believed that if he didn't fight online copies, it might mean he'd lose his copyright (a myth based on a weak understanding of trademark law that sometimes people confuse with copyright law). Thankfully, he learned that wasn't true. However, where it gets interesting is when he realized that whenever his works got "pirated," it actually seemed to help his sales:

"Then I started to notice that two things that seemed much more significant. One of which was that places where I was being pirated -- particularly Russia (where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading it out into the world) I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. And then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia it would sell more and more copies."

He then mentions that after a lot of persuading, he got his publisher to release a free digital copy of American Gods, and sales went up by 300%, even though it had already been selling quite well before that. And that was his epiphany moment that you're "not losing sales" by having stuff out there. And he explains how "piracy" is just a giant way of lending books, and points out that, when asked this question at talks, he asks how many people in the audience found their favorite author because someone lent them a book vs. going into a book store and buying it. And only 5 to 10% of people found their favorite authors first by buying the books.

"That's really all this is. It's people lending books. And you can't look on that as a lost sale.... What you're actually doing is advertising. You're reaching more people. You're raising awareness. And understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web was doing is allowing people to hear things, allowing people to read things, allowing people to see things they might never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that's an incredibly good thing."

I now have my film on pre-order on custom "Bullet Flash Drives" The pre-orders are going well. A lot of people that are pre-ordering have already bought the film, and many got the film as part of a free downloads promotion.

I am not going to waist my time and energy trying to beat piracy. In my opinion, its futile. As I state in my press release below, I have decided to completely embrace the new digital world, and in the process, I have multiple ideas on how to make this work for me come to me everyday.

Making a living, funding films with a mixture of diy and freelance industry work won't be an overnight route to success. But I do have a lot of passion and patience. People who want to build a business overnight may as well give up now.

My movie on a bullet is not my complete answer to beat piracy.It's only one of many ideas, but I do really think we have to start looking ahead, instead of trying to hold on to the past. And lets face it, the past was not really that good anyway. I done an industry film, dealt with distributors, it was never a business where the filmmaker really earned, unless you become a name director. Which is also my long term goal.

BULLET FLASH DRIVES PRESS RELEASE