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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.

So I'm breaking the million into four pieces.

The first 250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.

The second 250k is going back to my staff and the people who work for me on the special and on my show. I'm giving them a big fat bonus.

The third 280k is going to a few different charities. . . .

That leaves me with 220k for myself. . . .

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When he released his new stand-up special, Louis C.K. Live at the Beacon Theater, of course I bought it, not only because I like hilariousness and because I consider him one of us, but also because the distribution strategy is so unusual and promising. His idea was to make his special (which he directed and edited from footage of two performances recorded with six cameras) available for $5 as a download or as streamed content—region-free and DRM-free—from his site, www.louisck.com The special was filled with hilariousness and was well produced, and four days later, as I write this, it has been purchased more than 150,000 times.

“I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked,” Louis C.K. wrote in an e-mail to me. (And to everyone else who bought the special.) “If anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I’m really glad I put this out here this way and I’ll certainly do it again.”

I absolutely understand that this is a “unicorn” kind of scenario for content distribution—I don’t think that everyone can produce material and expect 150,000 legal, paid downloads (with ever-increasing numbers), but I do feel that the audience/viewer/customer response demonstrates something. It’s exciting and inspiring and I want to see where it leads.

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Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Aim a little higher. Check out the per episode production costs of Firefly.

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