Category: Challenges

Is Your Content Providing Value?

Having an idea of what your subject line in your email might look like can in turn give you ideas when writing the content of your newsletter. Also, we should mention that it is critical that your subject line as well as the content served should be of value to the subscriber. Your audience will cease to read and/or unsubscribe from your newsletter if is doesn’t solve their needs.

Find Out Why the Open Your Emails

To start you must understand exactly who your audience is. This will make it easier when buying ads to target your precise demographic. This includes the type of person you wish to reach, how old they are and what you believe to be the reason they open your emails.

Understand What You Want to Accomplish

What do you want from sending out your email and having your fans/clients read it. Some goals could include the desire to widen your reach, having your current readers recommend your newsletter to other readers and ultimately what do you want them to purchase from you? Are you offering a “Premium” version of your newsletter that is paid for? Do you have a specific product or service you desire to sell?

Take Action Yet be Patient

It is important to realize that sending out ads and fine tuning your email newsletter and social media messages, will not necessarily result in sales right away. Of course when crafting your social media ads the hope is to reach the kind of person who is ready to buy what you offer and immediately purchases from you. Sometimes it is a good idea to offer your solution as well as make as a call to action that your prospect sign up for your newsletter.

Interns Succeed

Although VideoFilmlWeb.com is not currently open for business, it was a highly successful company that lasted from 2001 to 2013 and helped to launch media projects done my members who have in turn gone on to have solo success. We are talking about the evolution of videographers and other media professionals who started out as interns for VideoFilmWeb.

Relationship with School

VideoFilmWeb worked with an educational institution that after decades of helping students, was shut down. VideoFilmWeb was active with the school.

Collaboration

And although the learning center was still open during the period that VideoFilmWeb worked with it, VideoFilmWeb also developed their own school of sorts. This “school” consisted of VideoFilmWeb interns learning both in the media studio of VideoFilmWeb but also participating in media workshops in the New York Public Library. VideoFilmWeb was hired by the NYPL to collaborate with members of the library in the creation of a curriculum for participants.

On Your Own

On of the forms of home businesses is that the of the solopreneur. As a solopreneur you do everything yourself. That’s no to say you may be delegating some work to others outside of your business, but otherwise you are on your own.

Having a Mission Can Help

Having to rely on yourself for business decisions is what makes having a mission so powerful. If you have a mission for your business  you will likely find it helpful to what you do because you can always go back to look at your mission.

What is Your Mission?

VideoFilmWeb is no longer an active production company but we occasionally update the blog posts because many search the site and we wanted to have new information coming in. But speaking of VFW, putting a mission in place we found useful. Our mission quite simply was “To help artists and businesses to be more successful.” What is YOUR mission?!

Market Yourself

Maybe you are an unknown filmmaker. Maybe you want to “make it.” Well as many of you know, I am a big fan of Harry Houdini’s.  The guy who no handcuffs could hold and who was always plugged into marketing himself.

Favorite Quote

There is a lot to learn from him. Although there are indicators that he wasn’t always the nicest person, he knew what he wanted and went for it. One of my favorite inspirational quote by him is:

“My Brain is the key that sets me free.”

If you are an emerging filmmaker this could be could be a phrase you might want to take a look at on so many levels. The only thing to stand between you and opportunity is your mind. If you are thinking thoughts of “I will succeed,” you will succeed. If, on the other hand you are ruminating on “I am a nobody and have no chance,” you are much less likely to achieve your goals.

Seeking a Strategy

The recent Art Gush article I found interesting because it looked at the question of “artist doing business or business doing art?” which I think is a good one because it gets artists thinking about themselves and asking what is their strategy for their business or career. Yianni Stamas, who has an extensive background in this area, is working with us on a new project.

The Deadline Looms

For example, we’ve been hard at work on a new campaign system with our friends at YianniStamas.com. We have built some new websites and installed some fresh programs and hope to have our “Marketing Machine” completed by September.

Going to the Root of the Question

Answering some silly questions is what has stood in our way of our completing our new mechanism earlier. There are some questions we are indeed having trouble answering because they go to the root of the artist doing business or business doing art question.

Thinking of Yourself as an “Artist” Can Actually Stand in Your Way

First we have to come to terms that we are a business and a brand and as such need to take steps in regard to these facets as is normally done in such circumstances. We have found this to be not easy because thinking of ourselves as “Artists” has always stood in our way. The Art Gush article begins to look at this issue.

Don’t Hesitate

All we have left are 5 easy things to complete after successfully bringing to the finish line literally hundreds of components. Why then are these elements proving to be so hard to get done? The answer can be found in how we are looking at ourselves. Even after all these years of clarity we are still hesitating about the “Business doing Art” concept. Yianni Stamas has helped us come to terms with much of this.

There’s a Bigger Picture

But creating businesses that create art has long been our M.O., so it doesn’t really make sense we can’t hop over that wall. We do have to finish by September though and that is a mute point. It just has to be done or an even bigger project won’t get to move forward.

The Irony

So, that’s all the news that’s fit to print from a group that needs to start thinking of themselves more as “Artists doing Business!”

When Things Get in the Way

This time around the post is going to be very brief because mainly why we are doing this installment is because we are putting a link to another website: Thrillumentary. Thrillumentary has an article on what to do when things get in the way.

Streamlining the Thrillumentary Filmmaking Approach

Thrillumentary.com is an interesting blog because it is being done by a Filmmaker of Thrillumentaries who is laser focused on making digital films with no crew and very few actors. At VideoFilmWeb even with our most simple projects, we had to have some kind of crew, but this person has figured out a way to get around needing one.

Facing Challenges

The post on the Thrillumentary site is a very personal one because it deals with a major issue that the fillmaker went through recently and found strength in ArtisticPreneurship.