Adventures in Digital Series Land #107
by Leesa Dean
BLIP is being shuttered on August 15th. I knew it was gonna happen ultimately, but still, am sad to see it go.BLIP was one of the early platforms that showed and monetized web series.Chilltown, my series, was on there and I received nearly 50,000 views on just one episode when they featured it on their front page for just one day. And that amounted to cash. Which was great. It wasn’t a huge amount, but way more than YouTube’s payout.
The people there also were actively very supportive of the series on their platform. They promoted my show on Google + and Twitter. Which was really helpful and cool.
When Maker Studios purchased it in 2013, right in the middle of Chilltown’s run it didn’t affect things for me but I knew something was going to shift. At the time, they publicly stated (and sent letters to creators on BLIP) that they’d be dropping a lot of web series. I wasn’t dropped but a about seven months later, Disney bought Maker for $500 million and I was certain I’d be dropped. Mostly cause I thought the cursing in my series just didn’t fit the Disney brand. Surprisingly, I wasn’t. And even though I stopped adding content, I continued to receive some views.