Vlog and Make Money – The Ninja Way

Kent Nichols and Douglas Sarine (aka Ask A Ninja) gave a great session about their views on how to create a successful vlog. The session, called 45 minutes film school (a homage to Robert Rodriguez‘s 10 minutes film school, a fact that made me an immediate fan of the guys behind the black uniform), took place in IDC’s blogference, earlier this week.

The Ninjas gave many tips, but here are the ones I found most important:

Organize your operation early – create a legal entity, and divide responsibilities in your team

List what you stop doing as soon as you have the money to do that (did anyone say editing?). This list will make you happier in rainy days

Clearly define your audience and resources. when you have a big idea, amazing concept, always keep in mind what are your real abilities – including time, technical resources, money and such.

Audio is more important than video. People will see a crappy video with great sound, but not the other way around.

Shoot quickly, as much as you can in one session

And, the most interesting thing for me, was their approach to their site. Ask A Ninja started early with their site, and drove as much traffic possible to their homepage. There is an opposite view, that you should push your video everywhere you can in order to get noticed. I wonder if the homepage centric strategy will work well with less viral content.

Thanks Ninjas for a great session! – A rare picture of a Ninja – A look that can kill – Future Ninjas?

Technorati Tags: ask a ninja, blogference, Kent Nichols, Douglas Sarine, Robert Rodriguez, 10 minutes film school