It’s surprising to think that many of the online platforms we use daily and perhaps could not fathom living without have only existed for less than a century. For me, my guilty pleasure is YouTube. This phenomenon occurred when two programmers and one design student, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, and Chad Hurley, respectively (of course the White guy is the designer..) brought YouTube to the public in February 2005. That’s only about 7 years from today!

I suppose YouTube has significantly affected me because my career as a serious filmmaker did not officially start until 2009.  I dabbled with film in the previous years, but only made a conscious decision in 2009 to make filmmaking a career.  Since then, I use YouTube every day to promote my content, find other content for inspiration, and to entertain myself. What did filmmakers do before YouTube???

YouTube and the continued improvement of online video streaming has inadvertently caused the decline and power of traditional Hollywood Studios – causing studio heads to scramble unsuccessfully to figure out a lucrative business model for capturing market share in this new space. It seems that only a handful of unexpected people have really been able to take advantage of YouTube, propelling these people into YouTube stardom. According to Business Insider, there are 10 independent YouTube stars, defined as anyone who is not part of a media company or brand, who make over $100,000. This number derived by TubeMogul, only includes revenues from banner ads.

I am interested in this topic for obvious reasons. With digital online media escalating in popularity, I feel that capitalizing upon this market will help to sustain Moth to Flame as a company. Most importantly, gaining a larger fan base will help increase Moth to Flame’s exposure and the probability of reaching the right people with the right connections. One of the YouTube stars that I follow, “FreddieW,” for example was asked by the Studios to make a YouTube video to promote the release of “Cowboys and Aliens”. I would kill for that opportunity. One of the biggest goals of a filmmaker, besides making enough money doing what we love to do without having to live in a paperbox on the streets, is to be able to share our work with as many people as we can. This is an industry driven by consumer fads, so when a fad lasts more than a few weeks, and is sustainable, then that is an opportunity that I cannot pass by.

My target audience involves 18-35 year old male and females who view content online. I want to observe how people search for online media content. Below are some sample questions:

1. What Keywords do people search for to access media?
2. What types of channels do people use to gain access to media content they want to follow?
3. Who  on YouTube do people subscribe to and why?
4. What compelled you to click on a video versus another?

I am also interested in behaviors for online media sharing. For example:

1. What decision did you make when you picked a video to share on your social media channel versus another?
2. When you watch a video that you want to share, who and how do you share it?
3. What time do you typically go on facebook?
4. What time do you watch YouTube?
5. What prompted you to go on YouTube to search for a video?

I am also interested in offline behaviors for promoting online media content. For example:

1. Who do you talk to about a video you thought was funny?
2. Did you read any offline materials, such as the newspaper, that helped you to discover an online video that you watched?
3. How did you hear about the video?

These are only some of the questions I am interested in finding out, which would benefit from traditional and non-traditional methods of research. Now to end this blog, here are links to YouTube stars that I follow. I follow their stuff because their stuff is funny and consistently entertaining. I not only follow them, I go to their sites and buy t-shirts and anticipate the release of their other films. I hope to build an army of fans that are just as excited about my content as I am about the content I see by folks that I follow. My most watched video is at 70,000 views , which is not bad… still a long way to go 🙂 I hope this study will also help me figure out how to make better content that people would want to follow.

Enjoy!