21st Century Business Models for Artists (5) - Time Vs. Money
There are at least three other points worth considering when developing your artistic business model. First, don’t forget the time vs money investment question. Some projects require a large investment of time, some of money, and some of both. To a reasonable degree they can be interchangeable (though not entirely); you can spend more time and less money, or more money and less time. Determine what resources you bring to your project at the beginning, and what balance of money, energy, and time are best suited to your bank account, health, and external responsibilities. (This goes right back to point 4 from yesterday, about setting realistic goals.)
Next, consider the details of how you wish to bring your project to a public audience. There’s the “cannonball effect”, where you start big and splashy and keep escalating from there. This approach may be necessary for the viability of certain projects, but remember that it is also more likely to require a larger than average initial investment of both time and money. Another concern to keep in mind is that unless it is specifically designed to be a project of short duration, sustainability of a cannonball project over the long term can be difficult to achieve; you must either keep surpassing your previous efforts or design a different and new approach to “reset” the bar you measure against. Contrast this with the “incoming tide” effect, where you start small and simple in structure and add more details and complexity over time. This way is much more accessible to an individual or group with limited resources, since you move at the pace determined by your available time, energy, and money. On the other hand, certain types of projects may not be well suited to the start-small-grow-big approach.
There are several stages of development for a commercially-viable large creative project or product: a private pre-release stage, where only those directly involved with the project are “in the know”; a limited pre-release stage, similar to a test screening of a movie, where a small selected group beta-tests the project; the advanced pre-release, where early adopter fans and other followers might join, and advertising and viral marketing often occur; the full public release, open to the public; the added value phase, which includes such things as sequels, DVD extras, director’s cut editions, and other new content related to the original work; and the “long tail” phase where fan-fiction and other derivative works appear. This model can be adapted and applied to many situations, on both a group and an individual level. A painter might have only themselves in the first two or even three stages with the full release stage being the first public distribution; a writer has beta readers and editors and Advance Release Copies and reviews before the story is published; a large group project may have tens or even hundreds of participants by the time the full release launches.
You now have a nice selection of approaches to examine your project for its business viability. Our next several posts will discuss specific possible sources of income and marketing, organized loosely on how we arranged it in our own business model. This is of course only one of many possible ways to arrange a business model, as that should be adapted to the needs of each individual project. As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome.
Other posts:
- Part 0: Series Announcement
- Part 1: About the Series
- Part 2: The Five W’s
- Part 3: DMAIC
- Part 4: 4 Simple Steps
The Artist Business Models series is based on a paper written by Reesa Brown and Kit O’Connell, with assistance from Steven Brust, Ken Brown, Deborah Ibarra, and many others. At the close of the series, the entire business model paper will be posted to Continuous Labs. The business model paper and blog posts are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 license.
Originally published at Words Words Words. Please leave any comments there.