by Kemila Velan 2.0

Last year, while I was studying marketing with a couple of masters, I started “seeing” in product placement.

That means even when I was reading a Christmas story to my niece, I gasped at the Hess truck in one of the illustrations.

“You need to double check the books you are reading to the kids,” I told my sister and her husband. “Product placement is infiltrating every aspect of media!”

I was in hyper paranoia stage. It was sad to me that no content is pure anymore. I mean, first Geico commercials BECOME content and then I can’t pick up a children’s book without seeing some EVIL corporation’s logo. But someone’s gotta get paid. Coming up with creative stories takes brain power and food to power the brain isn’t free, unfortunately.

So, I’m a little less freaked out these dayz, and now I’m looking for wayz to monetize all my little stories cuz ain’t no one putting food on my table except for me…and I’m at the point in my life that all I know how to focus on is writing.

Enter Storybids.com.

“Storybids is a simple yet extremely powerful website tool for media sellers and content buyers. We connect those with creative ideas for product placement with advertisers who want to place their products in user generated videos, mini-dramas and webisodes, music videos and online commercials.”

I’ve been trying to do this on a local level with businesses in the Miami community, but not too many people want to pay for advertising around here. This is a town that functions on “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine” unless the product for sale is booze or sex. Maybe I’m being a pessimist. Yes. This is not like me. Let me do a couple of yoga poses so I can get back on the optimistic track….

OK, I’m back. It’s not that businesses don’t want to pay for advertising. I just don’t have the kind of content and the number of eyeballs that would appeal to a business person trying to generate more leads.

So, I’ll keep up that fun task of driving traffic to my site, and in the meantime, I can use Storybids to monetize some of the videos I’ve been producing from my Biscayne Writers scripts. Oh, you didn’t know I write scripts? I do. It’s another revenue generator in the making. Eventually you’ll see Biscayne Writers videos on LatinLounge.tv.

Sean Scott Maguire is another Biscayne Writer working on a comic book script. He’s quite talented, and I can’t wait to see his colorful sci-fi and fantasy characters come to life someday.

It’s getting tougher and tougher to break into Hollywood, especially with all the big budget movie cuts (I read that Brad Pitt recently lost a movie deal – even he is not impervious to lay-offs), so making microfilms and microtv shows for the LCD screen is not a bad way to go. Besides, web sites like Hulu.com, Veoh.com and Netflix.com are all streaming movies via Internet.

So maybe Storybids is a good place to get practice. To learn as you go. Usually a filmmaker must make shorts and commercials before moving on to feature-length films, similar to a writer who must publish short stories before moving on to the novel.

The difference in posting to Storybids rather than YouTube -  you get exposure while getting paid. I’m going to try it and in a few weeks, I’ll write a follow-up blog post about it.