Taking a Double Round of Buckshot for Witch City TV

Last week, and the first part of this week, have been taken up on the idea of opening a Pagan Internet Television Station. This has been working with individuals who are very knowledgeable about social media and online advertising sales. It was a interesting, exhausting time, and the study we did was stunning in it's realization. The results hit me like a double round of buckshot.

Pagans do not like advertising, at a rate that is 800% higher than the avg. American. This means that Pagans barely acknowledged advertising, and for all the advertising spent towards Pagans would be 1/8th effective as it is for the avg. American. In this case, the avg. American is the median average of all websites, and click through percentages in the USA. On the average it takes 400 page views by a Pagan Audience to produce one click through on advertising. The advertising that is clicked through is also very low quality, having one of the lowest click through values with the most common ads paying as low as 3 cents each and an avg. of 29 cents per click through. This means that both the community and advertisers think that the Pagan market is not worth very much and is not seen as a productive place to have advertising.

This incredible finding was so unexpected that it shocked everyone who looked at the information. They did not believe that my community was so different, and the results gave a fright to their social media and advertising focused hearts. For them the message was clear, the Pagan community is a non-traditional community, and that it is inherently among the most market resistant populations they have seen. They came to the conclusion that the Pagan community is virtually unmarketable to and therefore any use of resources to reach that audience would not be productive.

Discovering the main community I am involved with is actually considered unmarketable is quite a dilemma, and one that has a definite impact on my future plans. For me, it means that advertising towards the Pagan community is very unattractive and therefore unable to tap into the flow of multi-billions of dollars spent annually on advertising in a meaningful way.

This means my desire to build a Pagan Television Station will not be able to be financed simply by plugging in advertising sold to the highest bidder, on the open market, and present the programs free to the community. This is like buckshot to the chest. This is what knocked the wind out of me, and it makes me scrambling, twelve days before the Witch City move, is how do we finance this station.

Let me take this farther for myself. The questions are mounting for me. Who are we building this for, and do they even want it? Are we doing this because we like doing it? Is this a serious job-building business or simply a hobby for our members? Is there value for us to build a station? If we cannot finance it through open advertising then how will we finance it?

The other question is can there be alternative model that will work? Are the Pagans simply the beginning of the advertising shift, and that new models will need to be created? So today, as I head to Salem in 12 days, the question continues to be, how will this work? It is a powerful time, filled with more questions then answers, but opportunities and possibilities in finding the answers.