You Finally Made A Web Series, Now What?

By Sonny Vrebac

Sigh. It’s a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. Congrats. Sincerely. Now pat yourself on the back – you’ve joined the elite “talker-to-doer” club. After the sweat, turmoil, and strained or broken relationships (likely both), you’ve finally made one! Your very own totes amazeballs web series.

Now put down your pina colada, and get off the hammock…you’re only half way there. While a great web series can get you fame, kick-arse representation, a TV opportunity perhaps, or could even see you become part of a national conversation, the truth is that most don’t. Some just aren’t good enough, and most just don’t have a strategy. I should know. I didn’t have one either looking back on it.

So what do you do and where do you start? Well, to answer that question, you would decide as soon as possible on why you’re doing it in the first place. Is it just because you like making stuff? Is it because it’s a calling card to a TV series? Is it because of a social message that you’d like to impart? Is it to demonstrate your and your team’s talents? Is it to make money (it’s becoming increasingly possible)? You might be tempted to answer “all of the above”, but that’s not a strategy. That’s ineffective and unfocused. The saying, “If you don’t know where you’re going, then any road will get you there” starts to resonate.

Let me demonstrate with some examples of why it’s important to know the why of your series.

If you just like making stuff, you’d most likely turn to YouTube and make stuff that’s interesting for you. You’ll churn out videos regularly, and you’ll eventually start to get better at it while gradually building on your niche audience.

Or you do it because you want to use your web series as a pilot to a TV series. You’d take your time crafting the pilot episode, getting an early conversation happening with a broadcaster (possibly a reputable production house with an existing relationship to that broadcaster), attaching experienced cast and crew, raise the production standards. Quality over quantity becomes the motto.

Social impact is your thing? You’d probably be looking at attaching yourself to existing causes and organisations out there who not only have an audience, but sometimes even budgets to throw at the right message.

You want to make money from your project. This option doesn’t sound as ridiculous as it did a few short years ago. Short form content is being treated increasingly more as just content by buyers. There are creators who I know that have sold their online series at $1500 p/min. In this case, polished and targeted content with exclusivity play a more important part. Suffice to say that this is currently a unicorn event but will gradually become more common.

Demonstration of talent. Focus here would be the festival circuit and having the right team. With an increasing focus on new media, there is an exponentially growing list of festivals that is starved of really top-notch, clever, and well-crafted content. Getting cut-through is much easier than with short films.

Having a strategy applies for your series even if you’ve already made it. Ideally you’re thinking about the strategy at the concept stage when knowing your why focuses your time and already-stretched resources right from the get-go. You might find yourself in the position where something that finds success, say with an online audience, gets picked up for TV. This is the icing on the cake that most content creators aspire to but few will realistically be spoilt for choice. A singular strategy to build your concept around will allow you to tower above the crowded sea of web series and give your hard earned project the chance that it deserves to do what you and your team wanted in the first place.

Sonny Vrebac is a CEO/slashie at iFodder Content Creators with a slate of multiplatform and TV projects. The Hunter n Hornet Appisode series has just been licensed by NZTV on demand and is due to premiere on June 6. The series is available in the iOS store here and on tvOS worldwide on June 1.