Tuesday, December 28, 2010

To sellout or not? That is the question

"Sell out with me, oh yeah. Sell out, with me tonight. The record company's gonna give me lots of money and every thing's gonna be all right."  -- Reel Big Fish

Most passionate, yet successful artists hit a defining moment in their career, deciding if they should compromise their integrity and passion for a few dollars in their pocket.

For example, Winston Churchill approached a nice looking woman back in 1943:

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.

Like Churchill's future wife and just about every other human being, we all have a price. Timing, patience, and the amount of risk we're willing to take are some variables before selling out.

Here's some sellouts of note:

In 1995,  the Rolling Stones sold their souls to Microsoft, negotiating their hit song Start Me Up with the Windows 95 Operating System commercials for $14 million.

Rap icon and social pioneer Flavor Flav hosted VH1's Flavor of Love, plus starred in reality shows, the Surreal Life & Flavor of Love.

In 1992, Wayne Campbell refused to sell out his public access television show, Wayne's World. However, he famously endorsed Pizza Hut, Reebok, Pepsi, and Nuprin (little yellow, different) in the meantime.

 

In 2008, Anheuser-Busch sold their largest American beer maker to Belgian Brewer for 52 billion dollars after a measly 148 years of existence.

On the other hand, here's some famous non-sellouts (yet):

In 2006, Yahoo offered $1 billion to Mark Zuckerberg for his little start up named Facebook. The 22 year old Harvard dropout politely declined. His 13 million members has grown to 500 million. Result: 2010 Man of the Year.

Dr. Seuss turned down just about every offer to market his work outside of his books while he was alive. Result: he died and now we get Mike Myers playing the Cat in the Hat.

Earlier this month, Groupon turned down a $5 billion takeover by Google. Result: Everyone has a price.

"No more flipping burgers, putting on that silly hat. You know I don't want that no more."

So after four days and three posted blogs, I patiently built my blogging empire before a request came my way. Sell my creative energies to Google Adsense. AdSense is an ad serving application run by Google Inc. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text, image, and video advertisements on their websites and blogs. If you haven't noticed, my blog is now covered with advertisements for Netflix, Conan O'Brien, and NORAD's Santa Tracker.

Result: $1.21. 

For every 1,000 visitors, my account gets $3.43. If someone clicks an ad, I may get a dime more (yet no one has nor should on my behalf). At this rate, I will earn $1 million by December 31st, 3598 AD. Even worse, I can't offend my advertisers or I'll lose them to ilovenetflixsomuch.blogspot.com. Plus, I have to keep entertaining you, my reader, or I lose my precious audience.

"so I signed on to the record company, they said they're gonna give me lots of money, if I play what they want you to hear. Tell me it's cool, and I sure believe it..."

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