[Manic Monday] Should Digital Distribution Channels Invest In Producing Content?

These might be interesting times for content creators the world over, as it is increasingly becoming cheaper to produce and distribute content  – music, movies, games, literature – and there are also a multitude of ways to enjoy such creations, where one creation can lead to another (for instance, a book inspires a movie, a movie inspires a game, and so on), not to mention the ways it can all interact and integrate. Yet times are not as rosy for content producers, especially in the ‘traditional’ sense.

Producing content, any content – music, movies, games, literature – used to be a significant financial undertaking. A large amount of hardware, space and expertise were required, and that meant money. Investments, naturally, would only go to the content that would be deemed by a number of people (read: bosses) to be of the highest potential to get return on investment. Judgements like this would depend on a lot of factors, but it all comes down to how big (or deep-pocketed) the potential audience is, and what the sales history is for similar products.

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[Manic Monday] Your Fans Are Your Monetization Strategy [Part 2]

I’m revisiting this article simply because it just touched the surface on how fans of any type of creative content, which could be movies, music, games, software and so on. The decentralized nature of the internet has helped make a lot of things simpler – production, aggregation, distribution, payment – and many internet-based services can help you with these needs cheaply or even for free. The trick is, since every creative content is unique and probably has a similarly unique fan base or consumer segment, you need to come up with the business strategy behind it yourself.

Some relatively established bands have full-fledged websites that have band info, tour schedules, news and even a merchandise section. This by no means is not the only thing a band should do, as they should maintain presence and communication on the various social networks, keep up doing shows and gigs (whether it is at a club, or a Google+ Hangout session) to keep the fans happy (emphasis on ‘keep the fans happy’).

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[Manic Monday] Looking At E-Commerce From A Digital Entertainment Perspective

During the past two years, various e-commerce sites have set up shop in Indonesia, some being multinational companies setting up a branch here, some being joint ventures, and some local players as well. The objective is pretty clear – to enable sales of anything imaginable via the internet, to reach a larger amount of customers while increasing the level of convenience for them as they do not have to take the effort of going to a store. Although Indonesia may not yet reach the level of e-commerce like in some other countries, where they even sell fresh produce of the internet, it is pretty clear that these e-commerce sites are here to stay.

Bhinneka, arguably one of Indonesia’s e-commerce pioneers, started out with purely computer products and has expanded to gadgets and office supplies (to name a few). Multiply has switched from a blog and social network, into an e-commerce enabler, turning unofficial members who sold just about anything via their Multiply pages into official ‘stores’ by providing easy-to-use payment gateways and facilitating logistics for deliveries. Some players like Zalora attempt to offer products for certain niches (of products, and of customers), while others like Blibli and Rakuten Indonesia offer something for everybody.

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