Josh Spector

A Statistical Look At The Differences Between Comedians Who Make Money And Those That Don’t

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Yesterday I asked you to take a moment and fill out a quick survey detailing where you were at with your comedy career and how you spend your time. The results were really interesting and today I wanted to break down some of what I found out.

First, here’s a little background about who participated. There were 137 comedians who answered the survey, most of whom I assume are regular Connected Comedy readers. This is important to consider because it means that the answers may be a little skewed because most of the comedians participating already care about their career enough to be reading Connected Comedy.

To present the results, I think it will be helpful to break out the data into three different categories: some overall observations, followed by some observations about comedians who claim to make at least $500 a month from their comedy and then some observations about comedians who responded that they make no money from their comedy. As you’ll see, I found that there’s pretty much a direct correlation between the amount of work you put into your career, whether you create online content or not, and the financial status of your comedy career.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS

You still don’t believe that creating content online is important.

65% of all the comedians surveyed replied that they spend less than 3 hours a week creating and posting content online. And a whopping 40% said that they actually spend less than one hour creating online content. This shows that for all the hype about how the Internet is going to change the entertainment industry, most comedians either don’t believe it or are too busy/lazy to do anything about it. On the flip side, it means that people who are putting time into creating online content are at a huge competitive advantage over most of their peers.

You spend a lot more time working on your act than your career.

62% of the comedians surveyed said that they spend more than 3 hours a week working on their comedy (not counting performance time which would make that number much higher I’m sure). But at the same time, 61% of those same comedians said that they spend less than 3 hours a week working on the business side of their career. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a shock to anybody that’s been around comedians, but it does reflect the misconception that the business side of your career is significantly less important than the creative side.

You typically perform 1-2 times each week.

50% of the comedians surveyed said that they typically perform 1-2 times a week. Meanwhile, 25% said they perform 3-4 times a week, 20% said that most weeks they don’t perform at all, and 5% perform at least 5 times a week.

Lots of you are producing your own live shows.

50% of the comedians surveyed said that they’ve produced their own live shows at some point, a number which I find very encouraging and is actually higher than I would have expected. Further down, you’ll also see a really interesting stat about the difference in success between people who produce their own shows and those that don’t.

You’re using Facebook, but you’re ignoring the most valuable online tools you have at your disposable.

A whopping 98% of the comedians surveyed said they use Facebook, but only 50% said they have their own website or blog and only 33% have an email mailing list. Facebook’s great, but it’s interesting to me that most comics continue to ignore the opportunity to carve out their own space on the web in the form of an active website and that even fewer see any value in actually being able to reach their fans through email.

There’s not a lot of money in comedy these days (shocker, I know).

66% of the comedians surveyed said that they make less than $100 a month from their comedy and only 10% said that they make more than $500 a month from it. I’m sure this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but if you’re setting out to have a comedy career you better be sure that you love it because it could be a while until it gets profitable.

WHAT COMEDIANS WHO MAKE $500+ A MONTH HAVE IN COMMON

They’ve already paid some dues.

Not a single comedian who claimed to be making at least $500 a month has been doing comedy for less than 3 years.

They put in a lot of time working on their act AND their career.

57% of them said they spend more than 10 hours a week working on their comedy, while 78% said that spend more than 5 hours a week working on the business side of their career.

They’re creating online content and using the right online tools.

93% of them said they spend more than one hour a week creating and promoting their content online. And, even more interestingly, 79% of them have their own website or blog and 71% have their own mailing list.

They understand what it’s like to produce a live show.

93% of the comedians who are making $500+ have produced their own live show at some point. I don’t think this is a coincidence – producing and promoting your own show is not only a good way to increase your income but it also can teach you a lot about how the business works and help you in your dealings with other venues, bookers, and show promoters. This also suggests that the comedians who are making money are the ones that are hustling, entrepreneurial, and willing to work.

WHAT COMEDIANS WHO MAKE NO MONEY HAVE IN COMMON

Some of them have also paid their dues, but must be doing so in the wrong way.

I was surprised to see that 31% of the comedians who said they don’t make any money have actually been doing comedy for more than 3 years. On the one hand, it’s impressive that they’ve stuck it out and I congratulate them on their patience. On the other hand, it probably means they’re not working hard enough (or more likely, smart enough). I’m not saying you should be rolling in the dough after just three years of comedy, but you should probably be at least making a little bit of money here and there.

They work on their act, but not their career.

60% of them said that they spend more than 3 hours a week working on their comedy, but 79% of those same people said that they spend less than 3 hours a week working on the business side of their career. Just to put that second number in perspective, that means that nearly 8 out of 10 comedians who make $500 a month are spending 5+ hours a week on their career while 8 out of 10 people who make no money are spending less than 3 hours on it. Just something to think about…

They don’t bother creating content online.

57% of them spend less than 1 hour a week creating and/or promoting online content. Again, this compares to 93% of “money making comedians” who spend more than an hour a week creating online content.

They’ve never produced their own live show.

86% of them said they’ve never produced a live show, another dramatic difference when compared to comics that are making money.

ONE FINAL QUESTION FOR YOU…

So that should give you a good sense of what I found out from the survey and I hope you find it interesting. Maybe it’s a measuring stick to compare what you’re doing to your peers, or maybe it’s just some fun stat porn to read. Either way, I’d like to do some more surveys in the future and I’d love to have your input about the kinds of questions you’d like to see 100+ comedians answer.

Please take a moment to leave a comment with any suggested questions/topics for future comedian surveys – thanks!

 

3 Reasons Your Website Home Page Isn’t As Important As You Think It Is

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One of the things that’s always been interesting to me when it comes to website design is that most people spend a ton of time and money on making the home page of their site as elaborate and impressive as possible, but then essentially ignore most of the other pages on their site.

I’d guess that most people spend 80% of their design effort tweaking their home page, and then 20% is spent on every other page of their site combined.

This is a big mistake in my opinion and today I’m going to lay out a few reasons why your website home page is not as important as you think it is.

But before I get into that, I want to make something clear. I’m not saying that your home page isn’t important – it’s very important and you should definitely spend some time and effort making it the best it can be. What I’m saying is that it’s not any more important than every other page on your site, and in many ways, it’s actually less important than some other pages on your site.

Also, please understand that I’m referring to sites on which you’re at least semi-regularly posting fresh content. If you’re not posting any content on your site and it’s just a static website, then this doesn’t really apply to you and it also doesn’t matter because if you’re not posting content on your site nobody’s going to come to your site or care about it anyway. If you don’t have content, you’ve got bigger problems.

Ok, here’s three reasons why your website home page is not as important as you think it is…

1. Not As Many People See Your Home Page As You Think

On almost all websites – from a comedian’s personal site to a major media site – the home page receives a small fraction of the total page views that the site generates. In most cases, people enter websites on specific content pages, which they get to from links that have been shared via social media or posted on other blogs and websites.

Think about your own websurfing – most of the sites you go to you probably enter on specific content pages as opposed to their home page.

Don’t spend the majority of your time worrying about your home page while the majority of your audience is looking at other pages!

Here’s some stats that back up this point: My Connected Comedy home page only accounted for 15% of the total pageviews I got on the site in the past month. Yes, I post a lot of content but I also checked the stats for a couple comedians I know who post new content no more than a couple times a month and the numbers are similar.

In one case, the comedian’s home page only accounted for 28% of the page views on his website and in another case the comedian only saw 54% of his page views coming to his home page.

2. You Can Only Get One Click On A Page

One of the other interesting things about home pages is that people tend to pack them with a million different options for readers to click on. Your instinct is going to be that you want your home page to showcase everything you have to offer and all the amazing stuff you’re creating (or have done in the past).

But that overlooks one simple point: a reader can only click one link on a page before they get taken away from that page.

Rather than thinking about how you can showcase a million options on your home page, you’re probably better served by thinking about what one thing you really want your reader to click on and making that prominent. Whether your home page has 100 different links for people to click or just one, you can still only get one click on the page before they leave the page and this is another reason why your home page isn’t quite as important as you may think it is.

Your reader’s first click may come from your home page, but their second click is going to come from that next page. So rather than worrying about adding options to your home page, spend some time thinking about what you want them to click to next after they’ve made it off the home page.

3. Your Home Page Is More For Strangers Than Fans

As a general rule, your fans are more important than people who don’t know you and most of your fans probably won’t be going to your home page. Ideally, since they’re already fans of yours they will have connected to you via your mailing list or social media channels, and they’ll be heading to your website via links that you’ve promoted to content pages. Sure, they may occasionally hit up your home page, but most likely they won’t.

So who is spending time on your home page? People who don’t really know you, or are curious to learn more about you, or just wound up there by accident. Don’t get me wrong, those people are valuable and you’re going to want to try to convert them into fans, but they’re not your core audience (yet).

If you’re spending more time worrying about your home page than your content pages, then you’re actually spending more time worrying about people who don’t know you than the ones who are already your fans. Just something to think about…

5 Things I Learned From Producing Comedy Shows With Potheads And Porn Stars

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It’s been more than five years since I produced and promoted my first standup comedy shows, and today I wanted to share some of the things I learned from my initial experience in the business side of live comedy shows. I’ll spare you all the backstory, but the first two standup shows I ever produced were monthly shows in Los Angeles that were designed to cater to two very specific audiences – potheads and porn fans.

The first show I ever produced was the High Times Comedy Show, which was sponsored by High Times magazine, predictably featured marijuana-loving comedians, and appealed to a stoner crowd. Here’s a video of some highlights from the show – keep in mind this was way back in 2006, so the quality of the video is, well, about what you’d expect in 2006:

After some initial success with that show, I launched the Vivid Comedy Party, a show which featured sex-themed comedy, interviews with porn stars, and was sponsored by the adult entertainment company Vivid. Needless to say, both shows led to some pretty interesting stories.

But today, I want to focus on some of the lessons I learned from producing those shows that I think will help you in your own productions.

1. Communities Are Powerful

The biggest reason my initial shows were successful was because they were designed to appeal to specific pre-existing communities. Generic standup comedy shows are designed to appeal to anybody who likes to laugh, but that’s not a true community. In these cases, both of the shows I produced appealed to specific niche audiences – people who liked pot or porn.

This was a huge advantage in launching the shows because it enabled me to attract an audience that I knew had a shared sense of humor, and then to book comedians that would appeal to and connect with that audience. Plus, it was much easier to market the shows because if you want to market to an existing community, you can usually figure out where to find them.

If you’re thinking about launching a live show (or web series or podcast for that matter), I’d encourage you to consider what kind of existing community your creation will appeal to – it will make everything from the content to the promotion of your creation much easier and more likely to succeed.

2. Every Community Is Different

In some ways, what I did with the Vivid show was exactly the same as the High Times show – I found an existing community, paired up with a brand that resonates with that community, booked comedians that had a shared sensibility with that community, and promoted the show to that community. However, one thing I found is that every community is different. Each community you encounter will have its own set of unique challenges and habits that you’ll have to take into account.

For example, stoners aren’t big on buying tickets to shows in advance (shocker, I know), so it made it very difficult to gauge how well tickets were going to sell for a given show. Crowds that come to a show featuring porn stars want to see the porn stars…but they don’t necessarily want to see the porn stars on stage trying (and usually failing) to be funny. So we had to come up with unique ways to work them into the show without putting the pressure on them to perform comedy.

This led to segments into the show like Inside The Porn Actors Studio, in which a comedian would interview a porn star. The first one I ever did actually featured Zach Galifianakis interviewing porn star Monique Alexander – you can check it out here in all its hilarious glory:

The important thing to remember when you’re appealing to a specific community with your show is that you need to understand the tastes of that community and take those into account as you plan the show.

3. If You Have A Community, You Don’t Need A Headliner

One of the most difficult things for a comedy producer is trying to figure out how to make the economics work of a live show – it’s tough to sell tickets to comedians that nobody’s heard of, but it’s also tough to make money when you have to pay a name headliner to draw people to your show. But, if you’ve got a concept that appeals to a community, then you can draw people to the concept and book good comedians that people may not have heard of because audiences are coming for the concept, not the comedians.

This worked great with both of my shows – stoners wanted to come see a night of stoner comedy and trusted that the people performing on my shows would be funny even if they hadn’t heard of them. And the same was true with the Vivid show – people came to see dirty jokes about sex and porn stars, they didn’t need to be familiar with the headliner to be convinced to come to the show.

If you’re going to produce a show, I’d highly recommend coming up with a show concept that will attract people even if they don’t know the comedians who are performing.

4. The Curiosity Factor Matters

I think it’s important to produce shows that sound intriguing. Whenever I told people that I was producing stoner comedy shows or “porn comedy” shows, they were inevitably curious to hear and see what that was all about. Those show concepts just sounded kind of wild and interesting – even to people who weren’t members of those specific communities.

In fact, lots of people came to the High Times shows that didn’t even smoke pot and women tended to love the Vivid shows as much (maybe even more) than men. I think this was in part because they were initially curious to see what the shows were all about, and found it fun to see what it was like to be surrounded by these interesting communities for a couple hours. It was unique, different, and fun.

If you can create something that’s unique enough that it sounds interesting, that will go a long way towards attracting people to your shows.

5. You Don’t Have To Be For Everyone

I’m not going to lie – there were a handful of people that walked out of every High Times and Vivid show that I produced. They were either offended, or were expecting just another typical night at a comedy club, or they just weren’t feeling it. But I didn’t look at this as a negative – I thought of it as a positive because I knew that these shows weren’t meant for everybody.

I believed that these shows were designed for very specific audiences and communities and that in order to appeal to those communities I would have to be willing to accept that some people wouldn’t like them. I think if you’re really doing something unique and trying to connect with people who have a specific point of view, then there should be some people who hate you just as much as there are others who love you.

Don’t feel like you have to appeal to everyone, because you don’t. You just need to appeal to the people that you’re trying to connect with and if you can do that, it won’t matter that a couple people walk out on you.

Connected Countdown: 10 Things You Need To See This Week

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Every weekend I break down the 10 things I think you most need to see this week, including a mix of posts on this site and other stuff from around the web that I think should be on your radar. Here’s this week’s countdown…

10. 5 Things You Can Learn From The Success of Chris Hardwick And Nerdist

In this Connected Comedy post, I look at the impact that the Nerdist podcast and blog has had on Chris Hardwick’s career and discuss some lessons you can learn from what he’s done with it.

9. Identifying and Connecting With Your Audience

This post from The Developing Artist blog is geared towards musicians, but is also very applicable to comedians as well.

8. Karmin Music: 5 Things You Can Learn From A Band That’s Gone Viral

In this Connected Comedy post, I look at one of the most successful bands on YouTube and explain what you can learn from them to advance your own career.

7. A Study Proves The Effectiveness Of Facebook’s Sponsored Story Ads

I’ve previously written about why you should use Sponsored Story ads, and this new study’s results back up my thoughts.

6. How I Got 10,000+ People To Look At Something It Took Me Two Minutes To Create

In this Connected Comedy post, I show how I turned a simple old photo into a piece of content that attracted a lot of views online.

5. YouTube Continues To Bankroll Rising Video Stars

In this post on the YouTube blog, the company shows off the results of some of the 45 creators who it recently gave $35,000 to for them to create content.

4. 7 Things You Need To Understand About People

In this Connected Comedy post, I point out some of the basic psychology about audiences that you need to understand in order to succeed online.

3. Writing Comedy, Version 2.0

In this post from Connected Comedy reader Sam Killerman, you’ll find a breakdown of how to use some unique online tools to help your comedy writing process.

2. How To Grow Your Fanbase By Spending 3 Hours A Week Creating Content

In this Connected Comedy post, I break down exactly how you can get the most out of spending three hours a week creating content.

1. What It’s Like To Spend 9 Months At The Comedy Cellar In New York

This article was posted by reader Jim Young in the Connected Comedy Forum and it’s really a great read about what life’s like inside a New York comedy club.

Looking for more? Check out these previous Connected Countdown posts.

7 Things You Need To Understand About People

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One of the reasons comedians struggle to grow their fanbase and use social media is because in order to do it successfully, you have to have a good understanding of the basic psychology of the people you hope will someday become your fans. I’m no psychologist, but there are a few things I’ve learned about what people are looking for that I think are worth keeping in mind as you create and promote your content. Here’s 7 things you should understand about people these days…

1. People Would Rather Discover You, Than Be Told About You

Most people love the idea of finding something cool before the rest of their friends. They like to be the one that knows about all the great new bands, websites, movies, TV shows, or comedians before their friends because that knowledge carries with it some implied social status. If you can make every person that comes across you and your content feel like they’re making a discovery, like they’re on the inside of an exclusive club, they will be more likely to spread the word about you to their friends and more likely to root for you and help you to grow your career. Because the bigger you get, the “cooler” they are for being there first.

2. People Want To Connect With Other People

As the world gets more and more fractured, people spend less time actually connecting with other people. But the desire for those kind of connections actually increases. This is one of the reasons why you’re seeing such a backlash against corporations and a rise in businesses trying to humanize themselves. There’s a reason that Dominoes pizza is showing you the guy responsible for making their chicken in all their new commercials – it’s because they want you to feel like their company is a person and not some abstract business.

In entertainment, this plays out in the way that people want to feel like they actually know you as a person and not just as a performer. If you think about performers with the most rabid fanbases, it’s usually the entertainers that are the most open about who they really are. For example, Howard Stern has been an open book about his life for decades and as a result his fans feel a connection to him that’s probably stronger than to just about any other entertainer on the planet.

3. People Want To Be Your Friend, Not Your Fan

The idea of treating your fans like friends as opposed to fans is a natural extension of the idea of allowing people to connect to you as a person. Obviously, this can only be done within reason, but it’s a good idea to try to address your fans like they’re on your level and to care about them as much as they care about you. Your instincts, based on Hollywood’s old conventional wisdom, may be to position yourself on a pedestal, but you’ll be much better served by trying to relate to your fans on their level.

4. What People Like And What They Share Are Two Different Things

I can’t remember who said it, but I remember hearing somebody explain this concept in a very simple way: Porn is the most viewed content on the Internet, but you don’t see anybody sharing links to it on their Facebook page. The reality is that there’s often a huge difference between what kind of stuff people like and what they share – sometimes those things overlap and sometimes they don’t. As you create content, you should keep this in mind.

5. People Respond To Passion

In everything from business, to politics, to sports, to entertainment, people respond to passion. We are drawn to people who love what they do and whose passion comes across in everything they create.

If you’re a fan of Connected Comedy, I’m guessing it’s in large part because when you read what I write on this site you can sense how passionate I am about the possibilities for comedians to grow and control their own careers. Passion is always enticing and you want to make sure that you get your passion across in everything you do…the more you do, the more people will be drawn to your creations.

6. People Are Bored

We’re living in a world right now where the average person has a lot of time that they don’t know what to do with. Most people work at jobs where they’re spending the majority of their day surfing the web, or they’re out of work and just killing time at home “job hunting.” There’s a reason that 62 million people are playing Farmville on Facebook and that reason is primarily because they’re bored.

It may be a sad commentary about our world at the moment, but most people are pretty bored and they’re looking for ways to entertain themselves every day. This actually presents a huge opportunity for you if you’re willing to put in the work to create something that will give them an antidote to their boredom.

7. People Love An Underdog

One of the most common mistakes I see up and coming comedians make is that they’re in a rush to try to make themselves seem more established than they are. First of all, it doesn’t work because audiences are smarter than you think and they can usually tell exactly where you’re at with your career despite your best efforts. But more importantly, it flies in the face of the fact that people love an underdog.

Don’t be afraid to be honest about where you’re at in your career and to invite people to root for you to grow and succeed. You’ll be surprised to find that people will respond well to your honesty and possibly be inspired by your dream much more so than they will think less of you for not being as established as others pretend to be. It sounds cheesy, but why be Apollo Creed when you can be Rocky?

How I Got 10,000+ People To Look At Something That Took Me Two Minutes To Create

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As I’ve mentioned many times before, I believe that there are opportunities all around to get attention for yourself and introduce yourself to new potential fans if you start to look at things in a different way. I believe that anything interesting you come across in your life – a story, an event, a moment, an irony – can be fodder to attract attention for yourself online if you understand how to look at it that way.

Personally, I have trained myself to look at offline things through the eyes of the Internet, so I can’t help but notice things occasionally that I know will “work” online. I came across one such thing yesterday and I wanted to share that story with you today.

I’m visiting my parents back East this week and last night my Dad was showing me a bunch of old family photos. One of the photos he showed me was of my grandfather and my grandfather’s cousin, sitting in what has to be the most ridiculously small backyard pool I’ve ever seen. Here’s the photo:

That photo itself is pretty funny, but what made it even more hilarious is that my Dad explained that for years my grandfather and his cousin used to talk nonstop about how great the pool parties were that they threw at their pool. My Dad always assumed it was some amazing pool, until he eventually saw what it actually was.

Anyway, as soon as my Dad showed me the picture and I stopped laughing, I immediately thought to myself, “Reddit will love this picture.”

I thought that because I knew enough about Reddit, a great social media site for link sharing that loves funny photos with a good backstory, to know that this would be just the kind of thing that readers of that site would enjoy and probably “upvote” to the point that it would get seen by a lot of people.

So, I scanned the photo and uploaded it to the web, then shared a link to it on Reddit in their Pics category. I knew that the backstory would add to the photo and that Reddit (just like the rest of the Internet) would react well to a personal touch from the uploader, so here’s the headline I used when I posted it: “My grandfather used to brag about all the pool parties he went to at a friend’s backyard pool. I just found out that this was that pool.”

So, what happened? Well, as you can see by looking at the link, it was viewed more than 10,000+ times in the past 24 hours – even though I don’t have an exact view count, I know that at least 6,000 people voted on the link and the vast majority of people probably didn’t bother to vote.

This is free exposure for a piece of “content” that cost me nothing and took me less than 5 minutes to create. And it all comes as a result of me understanding how the Internet and social media works and recognizing an opportunity, even when I wasn’t looking for one.

I’m not a comedian and I had no need to really “promote” myself to a general audience, so I didn’t bother embedding the picture on my site or labeling the picture with my website URL. If I was a comedian however, I definitely would have to get that exposure.

Now I’m sure some of you are already shaking your head at this and doubting how posting an old family photo will have any impact on your comedy career, but that’s not the point. Posting an old family photo is just an example of the kind of simple thing you can do to bring thousands of people into your world for no cost – and that’s incredibly valuable. Then, once you’ve made the introduction, you’ll begin the process of converting those people into fans.

The next time you come across something interesting in your life, I hope you’ll take a moment to think about how you might be able to use it to attract some new fans for yourself. The chances are that there’s probably a way you can.

Karmin Music: 5 Things You Can Learn From A Band That’s Gone Viral

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As I’ve mentioned before, I think there’s a lot that comedians can learn about marketing themselves from the way successful musicians have approached the Internet. One of the most recent musical groups to really use the Internet to catapult their career is a duo named Karmin Music and today I wanted to tell you a little bit about how they’ve succeeded and what you can learn from it.

If you’ve never heard of them, Karmin Music consists of two people who released their first album in May 2010. They describe their style as a “collision of Nick’s classic rock upbringing and jazz education (a trained trombonist) and Amy’s R&B influence and Pop background). You can read more about their background here.

Since launching their first YouTube channel in January 2010, they’ve gone on to get nearly 30 million views of their videos and to attract almost 250,000 subscribers on YouTube. Pretty impressive stuff, and here’s some of the lessons of their success in my opinion.

1. People Don’t Want You To Be A Star, They Want You To Be Real

One of the biggest shifts I’ve seen in recent years within the entertainment industry is that audiences no longer expect you to be “better” than them. They’re not looking for you to be larger than life and to be a “star.” The audience has become way more savvy and they now realize that in most cases that star attitude is fake and essentially a marketing gimmick. They don’t want to be told you’re awesome, they want to discover you for themselves.

The upside of this is that audiences want to rally around people that they think are “real.” They like the idea of seeing somebody like them succeed, and the more real you are the more likely they are to connect to you, root for you, and help you grow your career. In the case of Karmin Music, they are extremely “real” in how they present themselves and their most recent video is a perfect example of this.

They were recently invited to come on stage and perform with The Roots at one of their shows. They shot a video of the experience which you can watch here:

Now here’s what’s interesting about this video: the traditional artist’s instincts would be to show off just the performance video and present themselves to their fans in a way that sends the message of, “Look how cool we are, we hang with the Roots because we’re awesome just like they are. We’re big stars.”

But that’s not what Karmin Music does here.

Instead, they show their fans exactly what they experienced – starting with nervousness and excitement behind the stage, showing their excitement at the opportunity to share the stage with the Roots, showing that Questlove didn’t even know their individual names (as opposed to trying to pretend they’re old friends), and then showing the aftermath when they return to being fans themselves and making the comment “That just happened.” Even they can’t believe how lucky they are, and that makes them really easy to root for and very relatable.

Even if you’re not a musician, and you’re not performing with somebody famous, think about how you’re presenting yourself in what you do. Are you trying to seem more established than you are? Or are you just being yourself and letting people relate to your real feelings and experiences? I’d recommend the latter.

2. You Have To Constantly Create Content

You can’t grow a fanbase without regularly creating fresh content to keep your fans excited and help you attract new fans. Karmin Music actually has two YouTube channels – one for its original songs and one for its cover songs. Combined, the band has released 59 videos in the 17 months since they joined YouTube. They wouldn’t be anywhere close to as successful as they have been if they only had a handful of videos out there.

3.Broaden Your Definition Of Content

Karmin Music is a band and the instinct would be for them to only put out musical content because that’s what they do and that’s the career they’re trying to build. But then how do you explain these videos?

Even though they’re primarily musicians, Karmin Music produces content that includes everything from sketches to hair advice. Doing this brings people into their world and allows fans to connect to them as people – it’s not just about their music.

This is something that you can really learn a lot from as a comedian because not everything you do has to be a joke or be funny. Don’t be afraid to create content about things that you’re interested in, even if it’s not necessarily comedy. Your goal is to get people to connect to you by being interesting, so don’t put artificial limits on what you can create.

4. Tap Into Existing Fanbases

Here’s an interesting thing to note: Karmin Music has five times more subscribers to their cover songs channel as they do to their original music channel. Why is that? It’s because the cover songs they’ve created have allowed them to market to much bigger existing fanbases who are going to be predisposed to like those songs because they like the original artists who performed them.

Sure, many of those people may not ultimately enjoy Karmin’s original creations, but some of them will and that’s really all you need. Creating content that you know will appeal to specific audiences is a great way to bring people into your world and introduce them to other things you create. And it doesn’t have to just be existing comedian fanbases – you can go after any kind of existing audience. For example, if you’re a big Redskins fan why not create content that will appeal to other Redskins fans? If you enjoy working on cars, why not create content for car enthusiasts? There’s limitless fanbases out there just looking for good content.

5. Clearly Message The Actions You Want Fans To Take

If you look at either of Karmin Music’s YouTube channels or its own website, you’ll see they make it very clear how fans can connect with them and the actions they want them to take.

On their website, they prominently ask people to join their mailing list (something I recommend as well), and their YouTube channel header offers links to their other social media sites and a link to get a free download of one of their songs. Plus, the sidebar of their YouTube channel even encourages fans to tell five of their friends about the group.

Once you’re creating content and getting people to see it, you want to make it clear and simple how people who like what you do can connect to you and spread the word about you. Karmin Music does a good job of this, and it’s likely one of the reasons they’ve had so much success.

How To Grow Your Fanbase By Spending 3 Hours A Week Creating Content

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I talk a lot about the value and importance of creating content on your website as a way of growing your fanbase, but I know that many of you have limited time in which to do that. So, today I want to outline a very simple plan which can help you get a ton of value from creating content even if you don’t have a lot of time to spend on it.

If you can manage to find just three hours a week, you can reap amazing benefits from following this content creation plan. Here’s how I think you should spend your three hours each week…

The Tools You Need To Get Started

Before getting into a breakdown of exactly how you should spend your three hours each week, I want to start by just mentioning a couple tools you’re going to need in order to do this properly. The first thing you’re going to need is a website with blog functionality that you can easily update yourself.

The content you’re going to create has to live somewhere, and the best place for it is a website hosted on your own domain. If you don’t have that, you can always set up a free Tumblr, WordPress, or Blogger blog and use that.

Ideally, you’ll use a blog software that allows you to schedule posts in advance – this way, you can put in your three hours whenever is convenient for you and just schedule the posts to “go live” over the course of the week. This way, you can ensure that you have at least one fresh piece of content on your site every day…even if you don’t have the ability to work on it every day. This will give people a reason to come to your site every day which is extremely valuable.

I would also recommend that you have a mailing list signup form on your site if possible – when people come to your site to see your content, you want them to convert to join your mailing list if they like what they see. In addition to (or instead of) your mailing list, you can also have links for people to follow you on Twitter or Facebook as well. And if you plan on creating video content, then you’ll also want to have a YouTube channel that’s ideally branded with your name if possible.

Ok, with those tools in place, here’s the breakdown of how I think you should spend your three hours a week…

Create One Piece Of Original Content – 45 Minutes

Each week you’re going to want to create one piece of original content for your website. This can be a blog post, a video, a funny image, or anything else you want to come up with. Try to create a piece of content that will have broad appeal – don’t just write a couple sentences about what you had for breakfast. Here’s a few suggestions of the kind of content that typically works well.

Find Four Pieces Of Interesting Content To Curate – 30 Minutes

I’ve written before about the importance of curating content, and in order to do that you’re going to have first find cool stuff to share with your readers. Spend this time searching other blogs and websites, YouTube, and checking out things that the people you follow on social media are sharing to come up with the four most interesting videos, links, and/or pictures you can find.

Write Four Blog Posts Using That Curated Content – 60 Minutes (15 minutes per post)

Once you’ve found some cool stuff to share, add it to your website with brief commentary about each item and why you’re sharing it. Keep in mind that you can schedule these posts in advance if that works better for your schedule.

Promote Your Original Content Post – 15 Minutes

Each week spend some time trying to promote your original content post to various blogs, websites, and people that you think will be interested in it. My report featuring 100 Places To Promote Your Comedy Content can help give you some ideas of where to promote your stuff, but you can also track down relevant sites yourself. Email bloggers and tip them off to your content, tweet links to it at other people who are likely to enjoy it. Do whatever you can to let people know that it exists and draw them into your site.

Promote Your Five Posts On Facebook And Twitter – 25 Minutes (5 minutes per day)

Since you’ll now have a new piece of content going up on your site every day, you’ll want to spend a couple minutes each day sharing links to that content on your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This is very simple and won’t take more than a couple minutes, and it’s a great way to get your fans in the habit of visiting your site. Also, you can encourage them to interact with and share the content you’ve posted as well.

Comment On Other People’s Sites – 5 Minutes

Once a week, take a couple minutes to post comments on other people’s websites and content. When you comment on most sites, you’re able to make your name a link to your website. Commenting on other related sites will do a couple things – it will get some attention for your site (assuming you leave an interesting comment) because people will see the link back to your site, and it will get the owner of the site you comment on to check out your site and increase the likelihood that they’ll link to you occasionally. It’s just an easy way to start building connections online.

There you have it – a simple plan that will get you more traffic to your website and help you convert that traffic into fans by just spending a few hours a week creating content. This is by no means the only way to do this, but it is one way that I guarantee you will work. If you do this for a month, you will absolutely wind up with more website traffic, more engagement, and more fans than you had before you did it.

For more things you can do to get more fans, check out this list of 10 Things You Can Do To Get New Fans Today.

5 Things You Can Learn From The Success Of Chris Hardwick And Nerdist

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Several years ago, Chris Hardwick was just another comedian trying to carve out a career for himself in Los Angeles. He had gotten a couple breaks, having appeared as a host on MTV’s Singled Out and on the syndicated series Shipmates and he had gotten a little buzz for his musical comedy duo Hard n Phirm, but beyond that he was basically just another comic.

But then, by embracing the Internet and launching a podcast and accompanying blog called The Nerdist, Hardwick’s career began to take off in a completely different direction. As he explained in this recent Wired article…

“Like all comedians, I have a podcast. Mine is called the Nerdist, and starting it was my single best career decision ever. Doing a weekly show let me burrow into a niche and connect with like-minded nerds. Plus, it has done more to increase attendance at my live shows than all of my TV projects combined. Sketch comics, once constrained to Saturday Night Live, now have entire channels, entire sites, devoted to them. As a result, comedians, in addition to barely handling the pressures of being hilarious all the time, also have to understand marketing, delivery systems, and social media.”

I’ve admired Hardwick’s work for a while and today I thought I’d share some of the reasons why I think he’s been so successful with the Nerdist and give you a sense of some of the lessons you can learn from what he’s done.

1. The Importance Of Finding Your Niche

One of the most important things for any comedian to do is to figure out what their voice is, which is also just a fancier way of saying that you need to find your niche. I find that comedians often have no clue how to find their niche and that’s usually because they overthink it.

Your niche is as simple as figuring out what you feel passionate about – because whatever interests you will also likely interest thousands of other people out there. Don’t bother trying to choose a niche you think will be “hot,” because if it’s not something you’re actually passionate and knowledgable about, it’s going to feel forced and it’s not going to work. Just get in touch with what interests you and what you have an opinion on, and develop that interest into your voice.

In Hardwick’s case, The Nerdist is just an outlet that blends together all of his interests in “nerd” culture. He’s managed to combine his comedic instincts with his non-comedic interests in science, technology, and pop culture to find a niche for himself that also happens to appeal to a broad audience. You can do the same by combining your comedy with your interests.

2. The Benefits Of Using Multiple Mediums

I’ve written before about how important I think it is to think of yourself as more than just a stand up comedian, and Hardwick’s career has exemplified this. Once he found his niche, Hardwick went on to explore that niche in lots of different ways including creating content on his podcast and blog, as well as contributing freelance articles to relevant magazines such as Wired. Hardwick’s career would not be where it is today if he hadn’t been willing to broaden his definition of what a comedian is and ply his talents in different arenas.

3. The Value Of Your Community

The Nerdist has become about much more than just Chris Hardwick at this point, and that’s a great thing. As you browse his website, you’ll notice that it features lots of blog posts written by people other than Hardwick himself. You’ll also notice that Nerdist fans have contributed animated video highlights based on clips from his podcast. But most importantly, you’ll notice that what he’s built is a true community.

It’s really important to understand that what you’re trying to build in your career is a community of fans that share similar interests to yourself. Yes, you want to place yourself at the center of that community, but you don’t have to “own” that community. The more you can create opportunities for your fans to feel like they have some ownership in your success, the more they will want to help you succeed.

In Hardwick’s case, I’m sure many Nerdist fans feel that they’re essentially partners with Hardwick in the community they’re building and that’s because Hardwick has communicated with them, invited them to join his world, and created opportunities for them to feel connected to him.

4. The Power Of Curation

I’ve previously written about why I think you should see yourself as a curator in addition to a creator, and once again Hardwick demonstrates how powerful this can be through his site. As you’ll see, there’s lots of interesting content on The Nerdist blog that has nothing specifically to do with Hardwick himself. But, it has everything to do with Hardwick’s interests, his niche, and the interests of his fans.

This curated content, a blend of embedded videos, movie and product reviews, and news, ensures a steady stream of fresh content for Hardwick’s fans and gives them a recent to visit his site every day. It costs nothing but a little time, and has a huge impact on strengthening the connection between Hardwick and his community.

5. Comedy Is A Business

Even if you’re an artist, there are still moments when you have to approach your career like a business. Hardwick understands this and talks about the way he balances the artistic and business sides of comedy in this interesting video interview. As he says in the clip, “I realized that as a comic your job is to, if you want people to come  to your shows, you just have to get your voice in the world as much as possible.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Connected Countdown: 10 Things You Need To See This Week

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Every weekend I break down the 10 things I think you most need to see this week, including a mix of posts on this site and other stuff from around the web that I think should be on your radar. Here’s this week’s countdown…

10. 5 Things You Can Do To Appeal To Comedy Bookers

In this Connected Comedy post, I break down a popular question from readers and discuss some of the things you can do to increase your chances of getting booked.

9. Doug Stanhope Explains How The Internet Has Changed His Career

In this radio interview, Stanhope talks about how the Internet has allowed him to have better control of his career.

8. Facebook’s Sponsored Stories: Your Secret Weapon In Facebook Promotion

In this Connected Comedy post, I explain how you can benefit from running Sponsored Story ads on Facebook.

7. 5 Short Videos That You Can Learn Something From

In this Connected Comedy post, I compiled a few quick videos that will teach you some things about everything from blogging to marketing.

6. How Adam McKay Used The Internet To Find His New Favorite Comic

In this LA Times interview, Anchorman diretor Adam McKay talks about how Matt Braunger became one of his favorite comics…even though he’s never seen him anywhere except on YouTube.

5. Why It Works: Epic Meal Time

In this Connected Comedy post, I break down the success of the Epic Meal Time video series.

4. Introducing The New Connected Comedy Forums

This week I launched brand new forums on this site and have been thrilled to see almost 50 comedians join already. Go here to join the conversation!

3. Google’s Search Continues To Go Social

This Wall Street Journal article explains the way Google’s search algorithms are changing and demonstrates why building a strong social media presence is getting even more important for you.

2. 5 Free Tips For Comedians Looking To Get Serious About Their Career

In this Connected Comedy post, I offer some advice for comedians looking to take the next step n their career.

1. 25 Things Most Comedians Do

In this Connected Comedy post I break down the ways most comedians approach their career and give you one big question to consider.

Looking for more? Check out these previous Connected Countdown posts.