WHY?!

So we started our site, www.surprisesurprisefilms.com, in hope of getting a bunch of filmmakers (of varying degrees of experience) participating and making all kinds of films to exercise their creativity and hone their filmmaking skills...

BUT the responses, thus far, have been minimal...

We even added a weekly $25 audience prize!

WHY do you think that is? We are in need of your advice. Please, help!!! We are open to suggestions.

Thank you for the consideration!

Well... I've never heard of it before this post. That might be a hint.

Get out and promote it. Promote, promote, promote. Get a Youtube and Vimeo channel up, and share it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, everything you can find. Hey, perhaps you could advertise on IndieTalk or similar filmmaking related sites. Get involved in the filmmaking community.

If all you do is make a site and post on a couple of forums, the odds are against you.

BUT the responses, thus far, have been minimal...

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It takes a lot of work to make films.

There may be a few reasons, but these are probably the most likely:

Your front page video only has 86 views (as of time of writing this). The lack of traffic means there is very little reason for a filmmaker to care about your site.

The prize of $25. It's relatively insignificant. While $25 may mean a fair bit to you, it isn't a real incentive to me, and I suspect isn't an incentive to other filmmakers. It moves the focus to winning a piddly prize instead of concentrating on what's really important.

I wish you the best of luck, but what Chimp says is true. You need to get your site to a minimal level of traffic before people pay attention. You can do it through a few means, like creating content yourself, marketing, advertising etc. To keep those people there, you'll need content. To get content, you'll need traffic. Chicken/Egg anyone?

SURPRISE SURPRISE said:

BUT the responses, thus far, have been minimal...

WHY do you think that is? We are in need of your advice. Please, help!!! We are open to suggestions.

Click to expand...

Please clearly state without dodgy answers:
A) The venues you're using to advertise your website to viewers, your audience, not content providers.
B) What is your budget that you've contracted out to these advertising venues?
C) What are the conditions of those advertising slots? Times, traffic, keywords, SEO, etc.
D) You're not counting on word-of-mouth and social media nearly 100% are are you?

Provide that info and we'll have a better idea of how to answer your question.

SURPRISE SURPRISE said:

the responses, thus far, have been minimal...

WHY do you think that is?

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Why should I go out of my way to generate content for your site?

That's probably the big question most people are asking, after finally arriving at your site to start with.

Fwiw, there's thousands of other sites & blogs after free content, too. What is your angle, to separate you from the rest?

.

I actually bookmarked your guys' page.

I found it interesting just to take on the challenges.

Now it's just a matter of finding time to get them done.