1. Build a website for your animated short or animation work.
Creating a destination on the internet for people to visit to view your animation is a great way to build a following for you as an animator. Some of the things we look for in an animator's website is a short bio on the animator or animation team, a blog that is updated daily, animation shorts, behind-the-scenes, visual assets (branding, posters, etc) and merchandise for sale (t-shirts, music, postcards, toys etc).
The animator's website is a hub where people can find out about your as an animator and see your work. It is advised to connect all of your social network links (twitter, facebook, linkedin, vimeo, youtube and any other networks you belong too). The website is a central location where you are the publisher or media network where anyone can find out about you and view your work.
Our advice is to look at other animator's websites on the web to give you ideas on how to approach designing your website. And always make sure to update the design or add new features periodically to keep your site fresh and appealing. Watch how facebook keeps on improving their site to give the visitors an improved experience - you should shadow other popular website and see why they give people a reason to keep visiting their sites.
Last, but not least - purchase two domains one for your personal name (myname.com) and one for the title of your newest project (newanimationproject.com) . You can either point both domains to your one site or make a separate site of your works and your personal name.
The animator's website is a hub where people can find out about your as an animator and see your work. It is advised to connect all of your social network links (twitter, facebook, linkedin, vimeo, youtube and any other networks you belong too). The website is a central location where you are the publisher or media network where anyone can find out about you and view your work.
Our advice is to look at other animator's websites on the web to give you ideas on how to approach designing your website. And always make sure to update the design or add new features periodically to keep your site fresh and appealing. Watch how facebook keeps on improving their site to give the visitors an improved experience - you should shadow other popular website and see why they give people a reason to keep visiting their sites.
Last, but not least - purchase two domains one for your personal name (myname.com) and one for the title of your newest project (newanimationproject.com) . You can either point both domains to your one site or make a separate site of your works and your personal name.
2. The blog, the brain of your website.
Have you ever been to a blog where their last post was 2007? We bet you hardly ever visit the blog anymore, unless there is great content that you keep visiting for information. The current and updated blog will attract people to visit your website on a regular basis. So we encourage you to blog daily, whether it is about your current project or the progress of your projects. Maybe you can expand into your opinion on the latest films that you have seen or delve into your professional/personal life.
The key is to be honest and to open the window to your world, letting your readers learn about you as a person and your work. You could talk about why you decided to get into animation, creative processes or what animators eat during a late night deadline. Giving a piece of yourself or sharing your unique voice will not only help with your following but also peak interest in your body of work. So make sure you blog daily and keep consistent. Adding pictures and video is a plus, cause some visitors prefer video, audio and visual aids along with text. Missing one day of blogging is a missed opportunity to get a new fan of your work.
The key is to be honest and to open the window to your world, letting your readers learn about you as a person and your work. You could talk about why you decided to get into animation, creative processes or what animators eat during a late night deadline. Giving a piece of yourself or sharing your unique voice will not only help with your following but also peak interest in your body of work. So make sure you blog daily and keep consistent. Adding pictures and video is a plus, cause some visitors prefer video, audio and visual aids along with text. Missing one day of blogging is a missed opportunity to get a new fan of your work.
3. Reach out with your newsletter.
Why a newsletter? And what would be in the newsletter? The importance of implementing a newsletter is to inform your followers on things that are new with you and to have an opt-in for your visitors emails. This way you can create a way to send news about special announcements, contests, new developments about you and your work. Providing a newsletter will create a community around you as a brand.
A newsletter is a great way to put your own promotional advertisement for your products. What if you decide to start selling t-shirts or toys with your creative works? It is a great way to make additional funding for your next project. Instead of giving a percentage of the money to kickstarter.com - do your own kickstarter campaign on your own site. The newsletter can be of interviews you conduct with other animators - the skies the limit when it comes to what you can put in your newsletter. It keeps you connected to your followers and readers.
A newsletter is a great way to put your own promotional advertisement for your products. What if you decide to start selling t-shirts or toys with your creative works? It is a great way to make additional funding for your next project. Instead of giving a percentage of the money to kickstarter.com - do your own kickstarter campaign on your own site. The newsletter can be of interviews you conduct with other animators - the skies the limit when it comes to what you can put in your newsletter. It keeps you connected to your followers and readers.
4. Tie all your social networks to your site.
There are many animators out there that have a website, but no links to their social networks. If you have interest in getting followers on your facebook, twitter, youtube and vimeo accounts - make it easy for people to find you all on one destination. The key to bringing inbound web traffic to you is tie all your websites, social networks, etc to your website. This is a site map to tell people where to find your website, content and social networks on the net.
If they are on your website, they may add you to their twitter or facebook. If we find you on a social network and you have your website's url on the account - most likely you will drive traffic to your website and your work. We have been doing this for years and it has proven to be a great way to not only build up followers but it also brings us a great amount of traffic to the site. And the best thing is when our visitors share us with their friends or followers. On a side note, we would encourage you to add add this plug-in to your website. Once we did this, we had visitors share our site - improving our outreach to others that like the content. In this case we were able to drive traffic to some of the animators that have been showcased on our site. This is what we are most proud of to be able to promote animators.
If they are on your website, they may add you to their twitter or facebook. If we find you on a social network and you have your website's url on the account - most likely you will drive traffic to your website and your work. We have been doing this for years and it has proven to be a great way to not only build up followers but it also brings us a great amount of traffic to the site. And the best thing is when our visitors share us with their friends or followers. On a side note, we would encourage you to add add this plug-in to your website. Once we did this, we had visitors share our site - improving our outreach to others that like the content. In this case we were able to drive traffic to some of the animators that have been showcased on our site. This is what we are most proud of to be able to promote animators.
5. Video upload accounts.
There are two schools of thought on this when it comes to uploading your work online. Upload it to one video share site like Youtube or vimeo so you can drive a number of hits, collectively, on one video. It makes it simple so all you have to do is to embed one video onto your website. The only problem we see with this approach is if people download your video with a youtube video download converter and just upload it to their account. You will not have exclusivity when it comes to trying to drive the traffic to your video if there are copies of the video on other people's accounts. We advise animators to not only to upload your works on the two main sites Youtube and vimeo, but as many video sharing sites as you can. It can only help you to spread the word on you and your work, but make sure in the description to post all the credentials and your website url. At least there is a chance to redirect the web traffic to your personal websites.
6. Online & Offline marketing and promotion.
There are many ways to promote your site. Submit your animation to animation based blogs like indieanimator.com. Write up press releases about your animation and submit them the the free press release distribution sites. Write reviews on animation softwares or how to articles and post then on the blog or your newsletter. There are many websites online to do free publishing. Get involved with the local community by donating your time or services to help promote worthy causes, which may bring attention to your work and website. Create a screening of your work at the local library and invite other filmmakers/animators to show their works. Create some branding from business cards, postcards or email signatures that are branded with your logos - any chance to have some promotional material to give away or share with people will demonstrate what you are all about - people will share it with others. Just make sure you don't over do it, you don't want to turn people off. Just make sure they are aware of what you are all about.
7. Be around like minded people.
I know most animators are usually spending a lot of time with themselves and their computer. And some of you prefer it that way. You are an animator and the point of doing animation is to not only do it for yourself - but to share and show others. As a result of showing your work, you build a fanbase for your body of work. And a lot of times, business relationships and working relationships develop out of taking your short films to a showcase or film festival. You will be surprised by the number of people and animators that will approach you if you put your work out there for the public to admire.
If you still don't like to connect in person, this is where the social networks can help you. In fact it can connect you with people across continents and oceans, this is why we love what we do online. We have been able to communicate with animators and animation companies from around the world. You should make yourself available to other so you can connect on a professional level or a social networking level. So we would encourage you all to network and share with others whether it is online or at an animation related event. It can only help you with getting informed and promoting your work. Information is power and you can learn from the community about what is going on in the industry.
If you still don't like to connect in person, this is where the social networks can help you. In fact it can connect you with people across continents and oceans, this is why we love what we do online. We have been able to communicate with animators and animation companies from around the world. You should make yourself available to other so you can connect on a professional level or a social networking level. So we would encourage you all to network and share with others whether it is online or at an animation related event. It can only help you with getting informed and promoting your work. Information is power and you can learn from the community about what is going on in the industry.
8. Promoted & marketed, now what?
Since 2003, we have seen animators come and go within the online realm. Some became successful working within the hollywood industry, commercial advertising and independent world straddling the freelance hamster wheel and continuing to produce animated works as a hobby. You have to choose what you want to be and where you want to go. Many have animators have disappeared from the face of the net and animation world, because they were not able to sustain themselves to keep creating new works - we think that is unfortunate. Many unique talented artists have hung it up for "job security" and chose to not pursue their passion - which is a shame. We continue to receive emails from animators asking us if we know of ways to fund their animated projects. Youtube has evolved into an opportunity for many creators to fund their creations and many continue to develop proposals to pitch to television networks or animation producers. Although lots of projects are lucky enough to find their way to building a fanbase, there are many projects that never see the day of light and that is not including projects that make it to the development phase at animation production companies. Unfortunately, there are more animation projects out there then there are outlets for funding and distribution. We do believe that the internet has leveled the playing field for distribution. It is just a matter of learning a strategy to separate you from the many millions of sites, information and videos that bombard us on the internet.
So what is the point, we say never give up on your passion. If you love what you do, you will do it forever. Animators are a special breed, you do it cause you have to - and you wouldn't want to do anything else in the world. The real question is can you make money doing this? I think you can and some animators will be able to get paid to create.
In independent animation is it a delicate balancing of keeping the creative pipeline pumping out new works and having to pay the bills in an employment situation that will afford you the freedom to have time to create. We met an illustrator that took a part-time job that allowed him the flexibility to have time to draw in his off times, but the job paid so little he was always worried about the rent. Luckily his body of work and marketing strategy lead to a major job opportunity to work in the animation business. The other option is to work a high paying position, but it is so high stress and full of 14 hour days that you are too tired to do your personal work.The key is to find that balance so you can make a decent living while you have the time and flexibility to dedicate so many hours to develop your craft and make new works of animation.
Promoting and marketing your work is what is going to get you out there - you can never stop it cause that is part of the territory. Not promoting or marketing, you might as well create by yourself in a dark room. We are artist and it is our responsibility to express our artistic views and connect people to our animated expressions. Our final thoughts is never give up on your dreams and continue to learn your craft, connect with people and spread you vision to others - Do what you love and figure out how to monetize it. Keep balanced and have faith in your work.
So what is the point, we say never give up on your passion. If you love what you do, you will do it forever. Animators are a special breed, you do it cause you have to - and you wouldn't want to do anything else in the world. The real question is can you make money doing this? I think you can and some animators will be able to get paid to create.
In independent animation is it a delicate balancing of keeping the creative pipeline pumping out new works and having to pay the bills in an employment situation that will afford you the freedom to have time to create. We met an illustrator that took a part-time job that allowed him the flexibility to have time to draw in his off times, but the job paid so little he was always worried about the rent. Luckily his body of work and marketing strategy lead to a major job opportunity to work in the animation business. The other option is to work a high paying position, but it is so high stress and full of 14 hour days that you are too tired to do your personal work.The key is to find that balance so you can make a decent living while you have the time and flexibility to dedicate so many hours to develop your craft and make new works of animation.
Promoting and marketing your work is what is going to get you out there - you can never stop it cause that is part of the territory. Not promoting or marketing, you might as well create by yourself in a dark room. We are artist and it is our responsibility to express our artistic views and connect people to our animated expressions. Our final thoughts is never give up on your dreams and continue to learn your craft, connect with people and spread you vision to others - Do what you love and figure out how to monetize it. Keep balanced and have faith in your work.
9. If you are looking for internet marketing promotional techniques to apply to your animation works - this is what indieanimator did to take our website to the next level.
Like we said before, we started at as www.cartoonmogul.com as merely a weblog to keep track of animators on the internet. It was a private site with no one promoting it, then all of sudden we had web traffic from people that were interested in looking at the links we had on our site. Our main objective was to connect with animators that we found interesting and wanted to develop a working relationship with for television and feature film projects. Eventually we became a branded blog that was just following the independent animation scene online. Today, there are millions of animations online with only a few places to showcase their works. We continued to support independent animation and its animators. Along with some of the marketing and promotional techniques we learned along the way, we have shared with many animators how to bring there stuff to the next level.
The internet is still in its infancy and it is a great time to really get a better understanding of how to approach your marketing campaign and being able to fund your passion online. In 2012, we partnered with some top leaders within the internet marketing industry to teach and train us in a way that changed our thoughts on marketing and how to monetize our blog site forever. A way to grow your online presence where it works for you 24/7, implement a process that continues to help drive traffic to our site and allows us to be able to work on this site part-time while making money with our interest in animation. And all this is online from laptop. We are truly grateful for what we have learned and continue to learn from this top ranked internet marketers.
If you are looking a better way to promote your passion, another way to independently fund your animation productions, a system that will help you drive traffic, collect leads and make a substantial income - spending part-time promoting what you are passion about? We encourage you to click the graphic below ,input your best email and we will see you on the other side. This system has changed not only our operation, but we know you will get a wealth of information and training that will allow you to help you take your passion to the next level. It is these skillsets that you will be able to take with you anyway. People will be asking you how to promote and market - soon you will be the expert in internet marketing. View this as a part of your education outside of the training you have received from workshops, online classes or a 4 year university. Think of how much you have spent already developing your artistic skills. Well it is time to bring up your promotional and marketing training that is worth thousands of dollars. Right now, you can opt in for a very low cost. It's only $25, we promise it will surpass your expectations. This is a training and product that any business or artist (music, animation, filmmaker) should have in 2013 to take it to the next level. It will work for you, like it has worked for us.
The internet is still in its infancy and it is a great time to really get a better understanding of how to approach your marketing campaign and being able to fund your passion online. In 2012, we partnered with some top leaders within the internet marketing industry to teach and train us in a way that changed our thoughts on marketing and how to monetize our blog site forever. A way to grow your online presence where it works for you 24/7, implement a process that continues to help drive traffic to our site and allows us to be able to work on this site part-time while making money with our interest in animation. And all this is online from laptop. We are truly grateful for what we have learned and continue to learn from this top ranked internet marketers.
If you are looking a better way to promote your passion, another way to independently fund your animation productions, a system that will help you drive traffic, collect leads and make a substantial income - spending part-time promoting what you are passion about? We encourage you to click the graphic below ,input your best email and we will see you on the other side. This system has changed not only our operation, but we know you will get a wealth of information and training that will allow you to help you take your passion to the next level. It is these skillsets that you will be able to take with you anyway. People will be asking you how to promote and market - soon you will be the expert in internet marketing. View this as a part of your education outside of the training you have received from workshops, online classes or a 4 year university. Think of how much you have spent already developing your artistic skills. Well it is time to bring up your promotional and marketing training that is worth thousands of dollars. Right now, you can opt in for a very low cost. It's only $25, we promise it will surpass your expectations. This is a training and product that any business or artist (music, animation, filmmaker) should have in 2013 to take it to the next level. It will work for you, like it has worked for us.
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New Training Webinar For Using Facebook To Market and Make Money Online
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