Web-Work

Running a web show isn't all fun and games. Of course everyone's had the YouTube fantasy of sitting in front of a webcam and speaking their mind, while thousands of strangers sit entranced by their words. But that's not really a web show, is it? A web show is something more than just a blog or an expulsion of opinions from a person's mouth.

A show has to have guests, topics that people care about and regularity. Now, granted, a lot of those things are hard to come by on a personal budget and hard to deliver when you're a student, but it can happen. For instance, I recently set up a four person interview where I sat down with the creators of a web-series and the men who created the video game that the series was based off of. Not only that, but the interview was at the game studio where the game was developed.

The reason we chose these guests were varied. For one, the website and series I manage all have to do with video games, their development and their impact socially. Pairing the creators of a successful web-show with the men that created the very thing they were making a show about was a good way to cause buzz. The show is incredibly successful as it garnered at least ten thousand hits a day every time a new episode came out and the creators offered to plug our show when the interview was posted. Their fans had also been asking if they'd received held from the game company when making the show, and I thought this would be a good platform for them to answer that as well as showcase my own channel.

While I hope this will aid my show, I have no idea if it will. We've been trying a variety of different things to garner the attention of the YouTube community, but like print journalism, you need to a lot of work for nothing before you get something. However, we're on the right track and have more going for us than some other shows.

But what about more successful shows? What do they have that makes them so popular that the users can actually live off of their YouTube partnerships? One of the most well known examples is Hot for Words (www.hotforwords.com). Marina Orlova, the host of the show, is a philologist/model; a combination only a nerd could ream of made into reality. Orlova uses her looks to get the attention of her audience, but they actually stay for the knowledge she brings to the table. On a fairly regular basis, between 1 to 3 days, Orlova releases another video about the root of a word or group of words, and their meanings.

There's no question that a portion of Orlova's 463,376 subscribers stay for her good looks and frisky Russian accent. A good portion of them stay because she actually produces interesting content off of viewer requests to continue getting formidable ratings. She even has a book out with a large "As seen on YouTube" stamp on the front that is "chock full of words and phrase origins, and includes 80+ pics of me to go along" to quote her personal site.

(The cover of Orlova's book ^)

While that might be the peak of YouTube fame, there are others who are just as successful minus book deals and lusting fans. The Needle Drop (www.theneedledrop.com), produced by Antony Fantano, is an album review show. Fantano grabs the latest music, listens to it and posts his personal opinions on the content. Now, there's no end to shows like this on YouTube, but 43,784 people subscribe to his channel for a reason. A friend of mine regularly watches the show. Christian Avina, 19, really respects Fantano's opinions on music because "he really knows what he's talking about. He does a lot of research and is pretty unbiased." The frequency on The Needle Drop is dependent on the music industry, but that's quite a clock to run with so content is not hard to come by.

(Antony Fantano ^)

When I looked at shows like these, I saw a lot of potential for my own, but also a lot of room for work. There needed to be some sort of kick to our content, some sort of draw. I'm hoping our latest interview will do just that. We work tirelessly to produce videos on a weekly basis, which helps viewers trust us on our commitment to content. Our reviews work with the latest games that come out, and the ones we can afford to buy ourselves. As an all male group we don't exactly have the sex appeal Hot for Words does, but we try and make up for it with humor and raw critiques. In the end, only time will tell if our 32 subscribers will grow into something more. One thing is for certain though, there's a lot of work to be done if that's ever going to happen.