Growing Demand Blog

There is an old saying that “the truth will set you free”.  Well, on Independence Day 2009, “we hold these truths to be self evident”…

Freedom
Demand Studios contributors know what freedom feels like. They have the freedom to work from where they want, when they want – and they’re even free to wear what they want. What’s more, contributors are free to work in a variety of roles which suits their talents best, be that filmmaking, editing, writing, transcribing, fact checking, or being an expert. No less important is the fact that online audiences everywhere are being set free from the tyranny of limited, irrelevant or poor-quality  content. Because content produced by Demand Studios is predetermined to answer actual consumer questions and desires, it’s literally “driven by demand”. Each piece of content is also put through a rigorous editorial process to ensure quality and enduring value. This kind of freedom, we think, is making the web a better place, and a better experience.

Independence
Every day, Demand Studios contributors declare their independence from the shackles of cubicle culture, continued layoffs – by submitting content to Demand Studios – almost 3,000 times per DAY.   In fact, we’ve paid out more than $13 million to our contributor community and this month alone we will pay out over $1 million.  While some contributors are full-time freelancers looking for a sustainable source of income, others are “weekend warriors” looking to supplement their earnings from their existing career.  More recently, however, there are many examples of professional content creators who have been laid-off from struggling media companies, and who are now earning thousands of dollars per month and are reinventing their careers as online content creators.

Demand Studios caters to a wide variety of motivations and provides independence for contributors at many different stages of their creative journey.  And while our Manifesto is no Declaration of Independence, it does indeed declare our independence and that of our contributor community.

(R)evolution
When you take a fresh look at a 200-year-old publishing model, challenge all the assumptions about how content is created and monetized, create a social publishing ecosystem around the individuals involved in producing the content, and provide a sustainable income opportunity that wasn’t previously possible for most people, some call this a revolution; others an “evolution” of the current system. Whatever you call it, we continue to press ahead, while keeping our eye on making the content we publish equal to or better than the traditional media-produced content we respect. Make no mistake, with our evolved model, we are deliberately rising up against the inefficiencies of centuries-old publishing paradigms, the untapped passions of creative individuals, and the oppressive nature of “the fourth estate” who are structured to provide only a gifted few with the ability to publish. We take this revolution seriously, and we feel we’re just at the beginning.

Hopefully this patriotic spin on Demand Studios illustrates the transformational nature of our business. In the same vein of our nation’s founding more than 200 years ago, we see Demand Studios as a “great experiment”—although we feel our proprietary algorithms (to predict content value) and our ever-growing community of content contributors gives us important advantages that the founding fathers would envy.

These and other principles, my fellow Americans, are why and how Demand Studios is setting off fireworks in the online media industry. Now, go celebrate and enjoy the long weekend.

Steven  Kydd is Demand Media’s Executive Vice President of Demand Studios, the company's groundbreaking content creation business. Follow Steven at http://www.twitter.com/skydd