Seems to be that business time of year. From what I've been able to discern, there's quite a range of people here, from designers, to freelancers, former book publishers, and one thing you all have is experience, and now I would like to ask some of it from you.
With my mini-series "Shadows", if I go through with it, it would require I spend some money on the project, so therefore, I need some back in return. That makes me toy with the idea of selling subscription or content via the web. You know, something like, 2 dollars and episode or 25 dollars for the series sort of thing. Now I have no idea how the tech behind it works, but that's something to tackle afterwards, my question is, what kind of market is there at least here for that sort of thing. "Shadows" will be live action and basically, will people buy it? I know advertising is a key factor to this, unfortunately, I haven't exactly got the pennies to purchase ad slots on websites and things. So what are you guys' thoughts on the matter? Is it do-able, or do web series' have a tendency to flop?

I check other site that have tried interesting approach for a web novel idea.

www.amazonsoul.com
http://www.sinkha.com/

The most successful web-series (that I know of and actually watch) is "The Guild." Here's a Wall Street Journal story from last summer.

They started out just giving the episodes away for free and then charging for a high quality DVD of the first season with extras. Starting with the 2nd season, they picked up Sprint as their sponsor and Xbox (Microsoft) as their distributor and subsequent episodes were released first as free downloads on Xbox Live Marketplace and then a week or so later, through the usual channels, again for free. Then DVD releases for the seasons. They've done three seasons.

As much as I enjoy it, I've never purchased a DVD.

Most of the web-series I've watched were free for flash video and then charged for full quality DVDs to buy ...and most of these came to have any audience by establishing a presence on YouTube. This is probably for two reasons. First, it's a large audience of people interested in video content and second, they can leech off of YouTube's bandwidth. Serving video content to large numbers of people will cost you bucks. At some point, they were then able to get sponsorships, which helped them to cover costs. I don't think they are becoming rich doing this.

If you read that WSJ article, you'll see that most are not successful and companies that are producing content are looking for celebrity-centered properties, like Lisa Kudrow's "Web Therapy" series. I don't really think you can compare these to homegrown web-series that don't have a production company funding the venture and hiring name celebrities they can use to promote it.

PVP released an animated series a couple of years back that was pay-only in it's download/streaming form. It was not successful ...and that's a property with hundreds of thousands of daily readers. I did buy it up front, I think they had a special where you paid $10 before it launched and saved $10 by doing so.

Without advertising money, you still have the option of using social networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) to try to get the word out. But those sort of avenues aren't interested in (or friendly to) people asking them to spend money on something.

That's my take on it, anyhoo...

The internet in general...is 'free', beyond what you pay your ISP. There was interest a few years ago in a 'bit-pass' or micropayment way of transacting revenue...but it sort of fizzled. It would have allowed people to charge a dime or a quarter for access to a page, movie, blog, comic etc. with the idea being that if ENUFF people were willing to pay a minimal fee that you could cull some profit...big or small, but it would recompensate people for their toil. PayPal is the only way to go...it seems, so you need to learn their rules and play by them.

Mark's advice is excellent but my two cents is that you need to produce at least one or two complete "in the can" episodes to let others see the quality, "test-drive" them, get a sense of fan interest, etc. In other words, you need to do a ton more work before you can even pose the question you ask above.

To do this incrementally, you should think about at least doing storyboards/animatics of one or two episodes, post them here and on other 3D forums and get some feedback and maybe even some buzz going to determine whether to move forward to the next step.

Whether you get a subscription/pay model working or not, what you're planning is an enormous amount of work and I think it's important to not let the idea of that overwhelm you. Plan small steps, then move forward.

Good advice, I've also come into a whacky software idea that could help this venture, but tis my little secret for now. I've had others suggest doing the episode or two for free idea, I just don't want to fall into the trap of the local newspaper scenario, where the town started producing its own small newspaper, gave it out for free for a while, then charged money. Needless to say, it died pretty much the moment they charged money for it. The problems though were they kept it free for too long, making people expect it to be free, and two, it didn't really offer much new information than the larger newspapers did. This being only a 12 episode series makes things a little different, but not too much. My big concern really about doing subsrciption, or really the reason why I want money back is because if I do it, I have to invest money in a camera, which is only 800 dollars, but that money could go to savings for school in the fall. I think that's the only thing holding me back really is the fact I have to go to school in the fall. But, we'll see, it's already garnering some interest among my friends, and I've already had people express interest in playing parts (I have a lot of support from the people around me usually as I am always off doing these crazy ventures, and they want in)

What about renting equipment? You can rent pretty much anything if you've got an outlet nearby. Or ask in camera shops. See if one of your friends (or friend's parents) has one you can borrow.

see, we don't, and we have a camera corner, but all they got are still cameras. And I imagine the cost of renting a camera for 12 episodes would probably end up being as much as or more than 800 dollars, though I have no facts to back that up

For cameras, check out ebay. There are tons of last year models pretty cheap.

For paid distribution you can check out zune. They offer Zune through the Xbox Live giving you access to a pretty large audience. The web series "The Guild" was pretty hilarious but not sure how they made money other than some web ads.

Okay, so,
step 1) go in the camera store and ask if they know where you could rent a video camera.
Step 2) Plan out a shooting schedule to get a better idea of just how long you need the camera. You don't need the camera to do twelve episodes, you need it to do one episode at a time.
Step 3) Don't just imagine how much it will cost and then give up, find out how much it will cost.

If you want to be a producer, trust me, this is exactly what producers do.

oh, I'm not giving up, I might still get the camera cause then future productions I make I will have something. And I don't want to produce this one, only write, direct and edit. I haven't got the organizational skills for producer

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that. But there are cheaper ways to do almost all of what you need to do and if you focus on the $$$ you can easily lose sight of what it is you want to create.

I'd also offer, if you are putting up the cash to do the episodes....you are the producer.

technically, exec producer foots the bill if memory serves, producer is sort of like the general manager, he/she oversees like everything with the eye of Sauron.

Sign up to take a filmmaking course or two at your local community college. You'll have free access to higher end equipment, and you'll make some connections with local people who are into filmmaking.

Here at BCC, we can sign out cameras for a week at a time, and there are even some high-end cameras, big Sonys and JVCs. We can also sign out light kits, boom mics, and sound equipment.

Here's a piece I shot on a Sony HDR-HC1 which is a very good prosumer camera. You can get one on ebay for under $1000. It's got a ton of great features. I edited, composited, and color corrected in After Effects:

Click to view attachment

I did this for Advanced Video Production, the assignment was to do a 30 second fantasy piece.

yeah, i'm enrolled in a film college thing for october