I haven’t responded to this thread yet, so here’s my two cents.
TLDR: Free with Paid Multi-axis is an awesome untapped market… The current paid Single-Axis script market incentivises people to produce slop. We need people to write script reviews.
This is my preferred method of releasing free content.
I’ve been posting all my scripts for free, with multi-axis scripts behind a paywall. I’ve also been charging basically nothing for each script – like 2 dollars for scripts that are very high-effort and time consuming. *Just as a note, my scripts are typically about ~1200 actions for 2 minutes of video. That’s about 3x the norm on here. It takes me 6 hours to script a 2 minute video.
I justify releasing content this way for the following reasons, some are speculative:
- If you can afford a mulit-axis device you can (probably) afford a $1.99 script. Hell, I could probably charge more, but I won’t.
- Handy device users are generally more casual users. They are less likely to buy scripts than multi-axis device owners anyway, despite making up the majority of the community.
- Multi-axis is easily 3x more time consuming and testing-intensive than single-axis scripts. So, if you make multi-axis content it’s more tempting to release it as paid.
- There is higher demand for multi-axis scripts because there aren’t very many of them to begin with, and the ones that do exist mostly suck.
- [THE BIG REASON] I get to release high quality single axis-scripts as a byproduct (since multi-axis scripts are only as good as their L0 script anyways) and get thousands of eyes on my script that I would never get if I released it as paid.
Example:
I released these three scripts at roughly the same time. The paid script only got between 20% and 50% the views as my free+paid script post. If you take into account how many views on other posts I got through clicks through the little ads I put in those free posts, I’d say 100+ of those views on Siddung Pon It were because of click through on those other posts. What does that mean? Well, when you post in Paid, people don’t see your shit. If you want to make a name for yourself on here YOU MUST POST IN FREE, otherwise your stuff will 100% get buried.
For me, I love being able to release content that is to a very high standard of quality, get paid for that work, and still give something back to the community for free. This might be the way forward. By releasing partially-free scripts, I get to give the community high quality L0 scripts and make money. Not a lot of money… In two weeks I’ve made like 90 bucks. But still!
From what I can see, and my experience creating scripts so far, single-axis scripts do not sell well unless you are already established as a scriptwriter. I have had 1 sold single-axis script so far, compared to the ~40+ multi-axis scripts I’ve sold.
What I see is that the people who want to create paid single-axis scripts have to choose between low-views, low # of posts, and high script quality (AKA no money/no bitches); or middling-views, high # of posts, and low script quality (AKA some money / no bitches). Over the months that I’ve been on this platform, I’ve seen countless creators opt for the latter, because frankly that’s what makes money. I genuinely think the perception that “Free Scripting is dead” is actually just people noticing this shift in marketing strategy by some of the less meticulous scriptwriters on this forum. I can’t see their receipts, but my guess is that more posts = more money, regardless of the quality of the script. All they have to do is clear the bar of “is this broken/ai generated?” and if they do they can make a dollar or two.
What we really need, in my opinion, is people to write reviews of scripts, especially single-axis scripts. Write controversial ones, good ones, bad ones. Just people to say “hey this author, their scripts are shit” or “hey, this one is worth the money” could change the face of the website because right now there is no barrier to slop. What happens when no one calls out the slop? We become a slop factory. Right now there are 5 (FIVE) script reviews on the entire site.
