Louis CK: Over $1 Million In Sales In Just 12 Days For DRM-Free Download

from the polite,-awesome-and-human dept

As you probably recall, comedian Louis CK kicked off a brilliant little experiment in getting people to buy his latest comedy special, by being polite, awesome and human. He offered up a direct-to-fan offering, with no DRM, from his own site for $5, and he did so while being totally open about the process and his thinking, which only endeared him to more people. After four days, he had brought in over $500k, and twelve days in, he's surpassed $1 million, and he's got the screenshot from PayPal to prove it:

Once again, his writeup shows that this has been quite a success, as he admits that he's never had a million dollars suddenly dumped on him like this. Also, again, his writeup reinforces what worked about this in the first place, the fact that he's being polite, awesome and human:

So it's been about 12 days since the thing started and yesterday we hit the crazy number. One million dollars. That's a lot of money. Really too much money. I've never had a million dollars all of a sudden. and since we're all sharing this experience and since it's really your money, I wanted to let you know what I'm doing with it. People are paying attention to what's going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.

He then explains what he's doing with the million dollars. $250,000 will go to pay off expenses related to the website. Another $250,000 is going to his staff and the people who helped work on the show. As he says "I'm giving them a big fat bonus." Then he's taking $280,000 and giving it away to a list of charities:

The Fistula Foundation

The Pablove Foundation

charity: water

Kiva

Green Chimneys

What's interesting is he notes that he learned about some of these via recommendations people made to him via Twitter -- once again, showing that he's reaching out and connecting with fans.

Finally, he's keeping the rest for himself:

That leaves me with 220k for myself. Some of that will pay my rent and will care for my childen. The rest I will do terrible, horrible things with and none of that is any of your business. In any case, to me, 220k is enough out of a million.

I never viewed money as being "my money" I always saw it as "The money" It's a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.

He also notes that he's a little uncomfortable with all the news this is making and he plans to stay quiet for a bit. Again, this highlights a few key points:

Being polite and sounding human can be incredibly powerful. It's amazing how simple this seems, but so many things are first run through so many layers of PR people and publicists and the like that it's still pretty rare to see someone famous come across as being human. It's entirely possible that Louis is running all this through PR people and publicists before it's going live, but if so, they're doing a good job in making sure it really sounds like it's directly from Louis. If I had to guess, I'd say that's because it actually is directly from Louis. From everything I've seen, heard and read about him, this really does match his persona.
Fans don't resent content creators for getting a ton of money. We keep hearing entertainment industry bigwigs and copyright maximalists insist that people claim that the reason they infringe is because content creators "have too much money already." But as we've seen with Louis, nearly everyone who's taken part in this is positively thrilled with his success. I haven't seen anyone complaining that he made too much money at all. Do some people complain about rich stars? Sure, but if you're polite, awesome and human, and actually connect with your fans, they want you to succeed.
Having a charitable component is kinda cool. Yes, in this case it's after-the-fact, but it's still cool. We've shown in the past that pay-what-you-want works better with a charitable component, and I'd guess it's because it fits with the reasons that people are willing to buy in the first place.

This is a pretty huge success and shows what can be done by going direct-to-fan, while really connecting with those fans. Meanwhile, over at Step2, we're discussing why this worked, and whether or not "polite, awesome and human" are really the key three components. Feel free to weigh in...

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Don't worry about middle-class Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney—he doesn't have to rely solely on the millions he made during his time as a partner at private equity firm Bain Capital to get by while he's unemployed. In fact, he's still pulling in millions from the job-killing deals Bain does, more than a decade after his departure. The New York Times pieces together some of the details of Romney's continuing financial relationship with Bain, finding that:

Though Mr. Romney left Bain in early 1999, he received a share of the corporate buyout and investment profits enjoyed by partners from all Bain deals through February 2009: four global buyout funds and 18 other funds, more than twice as many over all as Mr. Romney had a share of the year he left. He was also given the right to invest his own money alongside his former partners. Because some of the funds and deals covered by Mr. Romney’s agreement will not fully wind down for several years, Mr. Romney is still entitled to a share of some of Bain’s profits.

That adds up to a lot of money:

...the family’s Bain holdings are still considerable: in his 2011 disclosure, Mr. Romney reported Bain assets between $12.4 million and $60.9 million, which provided between $1.5 million and $9.3 million in income. The blind trust for his wife, Ann, held at least another $10 million, generating income of at least $4.1 million. Because the campaign is required to provide only a minimum value for some Bain assets now held by Mrs. Romney, the total could be far more.

Romney's post-1999 take from Bain includes profit on the purchases of KB Toys and Clear Channel Communications, each of which resulted in the loss of thousands of jobs. Romney would, of course, point out that he didn't personally work on those deals. And it's true. He just profited from them—how much, we don't know, because he won't release his tax returns or detailed financial information—after having spent his career working on similar deals.

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Louis CK: Over $1 Million In Sales In Just 12 Days For DRM-Free Download

from the polite,-awesome-and-human dept

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