Guerilla Showrunner

Hey, everyone!

After the exciting weekend (front page of Hacker News! Top 1000 Trending URLS on Twitter! Lots of awesome comments from awesome people!) I figured that everyone might want to know - what’s next?

Well, there’s no more pornography for a while, although it’ll be back. Promise.

This week I’m currently preparing an awesomely geeky article on Google Analytics and how to use it, specifically for web shows - this won’t be basic “Analytics can show you how many people visit your site” stuff, this will be hardcore and very, very specific - how to track clicks to locations outside your website, what metrics you should be completely ignoring, how to use Referring Sites to create a viral loop effect. Stuff like that. I think that it’ll be a lot of use to everyone, and particularly to people who’ve already got the Analytics going but want to make more use of them.

Next week I’ll be doing the first Guerilla Showrunner interview, with** Burnie Burns of “Red vs Blue” **fame. Red vs Blue is one of the most successful Web shows ever, right up there with Lonelygirl and The Guild, and I’m talking with him about how their model has changed over the years, how they make money, and whether “going viral” is even possible any more.

And after that, I’m looking to do a serious Money article. It’s the elephant in the room these days for web shows - almost no-one’s directly talking about how to make shows that make a living - indeed, I’ve seen something of a backlash against the very idea - and yet everyone’s thinking about it. I’ve made more than a bit of cash out of this gig in my time, and I’ll be talking about how I did it, and how various models from around the Web imply you could do it better. I might even talk about porn again.

In the more distant future, there will be more interviews - Clint Hackleman of Myndflame’s already in (for those who don’t know the name, he’s produced several of the most successful World of Warcraft Machinima series, and when we say successful, we mean 7-figure viewing figures), and I’m talking to or trying to get in contact with a lot of other cool people. (Yep, including some of the Kink.com guys). And of course I’ll be writing more specific, useful advice - and feel free to ask for anything that you want to see. Currently, sound design, editing, and some ranting about the “Minimum Effective Dose” for a web series are all in the offing.

Looking forward to chatting with you all over the next weeks, months and years!