The launch of ActionRoom.TV

This is my follow up post to my story here, before I launched ActionRoom.TV.

When I started my art career at the end of 2012

I didn’t know what artists do to get their names out there. Coming from a design/marketing background, I knew in business world, a company would hire someone building a website, plan a PR campaign, buy some advertising, and fine-tune the message so it’s easy for people to share. All of these require some initial budget. As an artist, I didn’t have any budget in my “marketing campaign”, I didn’t even know if I would be able to pay for all the cost of my first solo show. This gives us artists an unfair starting point in the already noisy world, even though we have important ideas to share.

There must be a way, I thought

I decided to go to art shows every week. I visited as many galleries as possible, I talked to artists in all stages of their careers, and I made lots of friends along the way. And one day, it hit me. I realised the artist community is one of the best to be in, we are a group of friendly, well connected and supportive people. We might be shy sometimes but if we are given an opportunity, we can help one another and rise up with our passion.

So I made a list of tools I’d like to have as an artist

– I wanted to have personal conversations with successful artists, asking them the less obvious questions, how they get to where they are, and what do they do on daily basis.
– I wanted to create a “strategy game plan” that I can act on, to consistently market myself. A game plan that I can forget when I’m creating art, and be there ready to guide me when I’m back to “communication mode”.
– I wanted to create a community where I can ask any question I have, and get my answers within hours.
– I wanted a place where I can learn something new every time I take a break from work, instead of watching cat videos on Facebook.
– And most of all, I wanted to share these tools to as many people as possible, so the whole community can benefit from this. (Guy Kawasaki called it “Baking a bigger pie”)

I could visualise the whole thing in my head, but if I want to make it happen, the community will play a big part

– When many of you told me your favourite artists, I had a better chance of getting them in front of the camera with me and record an interview with them. (So thank you for sharing your favourite artists, at least the ones who are still with us.)
– Even though I had tested many strategies, I want to make sure they work for you as well. I have a library of actionable “practices” for you to use and discuss. I will also share all the tools I have created to make things happen, from pre-formatted excel sheets to programming plugins where you can use in your own website.
– With a community of artists, we can help each other by sharing resources, opportunities, best practices, troubleshooting any time of the day.
– With a new place to hang out, we can turn our youtube watching hours into learning opportunities.
– And of course, the more people join in, the more people we can help and get help from.

Some people have asked me about how I’m going to support this project

The answer is, I have a business model behind this project, because there are various costs to make it happen:
– I have put in countless hour in building this platform, hours where I normally work as a freelancer and get paid up to 10k per project
– I have hired developers out of my own pocket
– I’m hosting videos for this platform, and video streaming is expensive
– and I intend to financially support the community in some ways once I reach certain milestones.

So I have come up with a subscription model for this platform to support it.

You can sign up to monthly, yearly or life time subscription (The life time subscription cost will increase when more content are added, so the earlier you join, the more you save)