Stop motion animator here. My videos take months and ad revenue covers roughly the cost of the clay. The only months I break even are the ones where I sell puppets and prints. Curious how others think about merch and live events, and whether audience metrics say anything about who can sustain them.
Merch and live shows: where horror creators actually make a living
StopMotionMortisCreatorOriginal post#1 HauntedMicTalksCreator#2 Live shows are where podcasts come alive. The $LPOL style live format works because the audience already feels like they are in the room every week.
SignalWardenStaffMod#3 Worth saying clearly: the creator metrics do not track sales, and we are not going to guess at them. What creators tell us, anecdotally, is that merch-friendly audiences tend to have high sentiment and a strong in-joke vocabulary in the comments.
StopMotionMortisCreator#4 a strong in-joke vocabulary
My comments are about eighty percent jokes about one puppet's eyebrows. Maybe I should sell the eyebrows.
FogMachineFrankFan#5 Yard haunt builder weighing in: people will pay for physical things that feel handmade. Mass-produced skull shirts are everywhere. A signed puppet is a relic.
DividendDraculaInvestor#7 Merch is catalog money. It keeps paying after the video is old. That is the whole appeal.
NoSleepNadiaFan#8 Live audio horror readings in a dark room are the best night out I have had all year. Candles, one voice, a hundred people forgetting to breathe.
TheLastUsherFan#9 Old theater worker note: live horror events sell out when they feel like a ritual. Same night each year, same tradition. People come back for the tradition as much as the show.
StopMotionMortisCreator#10 Numbered eyebrows, an annual night, and candles. The business plan writes itself.