Sponsoring Wind Tunnel Dreams

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

shadesong reports:

WTD Analysis for people examining cyberfunded creativity
I made a fraction this month of what I made last month; I think it's due to the ball-dropping. People seem to sponsor more when it's one complete story or when it's a marathon, like November. (Will I do a marathon month again? Maybe,but not soon.)

Have other cyberfunded creativity folks noticed a similar trend, either in projects you host or ones you sponsor?

Comments

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Not sure. Might be a marketing issue, though. I notice you have to be specific about audience expectations with this kind of thing.

[shadesong.livejournal.com]

Note for people who didn't see the rest of my post: The ball-dropping in question =

* Started a seven-part story.
* Did two days/parts and found that it Was Not Working,and also got severely overwhelmed by Life Stuff.
* Picked upon it a week later with a three-part story.
* Did two isolated storybits.

So.In November I did it every day for a month; in January, a seven-part story in a week.February was kinda a mess.

Thank you...

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

... for adding those details. I wasn't sure how much to quote, so I just used the subtitled section on cyberfunded creativity.

Serialized projects are challenging. It even affects published novelists; I've seen several books being written in serialized format online by authors with previous novels in hardcopy, and often the online book projects never get finished. As a reader, I find that irregularity makes me reluctant to sponsor.

However, serialization can work when each item stands alone; for example, a series of related short stories, such as "The Aphorisms of Kherishdar" by haikujaguar. When each installment is a complete piece of entertainment unto itself, that may incline readers to donate more readily.

More samples are needed on all counts, though, before any patterns can be considered conclusive.

[kadiera.livejournal.com]

I think, in general, consistency is an important factor.

People trust businesses that have been around a while, because they've built up the expectation that the business will be there when they go back next week.

Web-based stuff is, by its nature, ephemeral; building that same trust is hard. Even in blogging, when I got to the point of writing at least once a month, I got a lot more site traffic than when it was more haphazard.

In terms of a specific project, it'd seem to me to be hard to sponsor a project that was only partially completed; if I got a couple days in, sponsored, and then the project never went any farther, I'd be very disappointed.

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

True. Consistency is important, but challenging to maintain.

One thing I do is set my public goals lower than my private goals -- essentially a variation of padding my deadlines. If I tell people that I'll update my blog several times a week (as my profile says) and I manage daily or better, they'll be pleased; whereas the other way around would be disappointing. The more active I am, though, the more people seem to respond to my posts and to Friend me. I set the Poetry Fishbowl at once a month rather than a specific date because I should be able to hit that even if I get sick or have power outages.