But our interview is now technically over, and even though Hart’s arm is in a sling from a dance contest-related injury, she’s right back at work.

“You want to stay and help?” she asks, and moments later I find myself affixing return address labels to envelopes, passing them down the assembly line to be stuffed with t-shirts.

Like at least 10,300 people before me, I’ve just discovered, it’s hard to say no to Hart.

The T-shirts, thank you notes and “E-Polygamy Certificates” we’re packaging up are bound for those who helped Hart raise over $222,000 on Indiegogo for an international tour bringing her face to face with the fans.

Beginning this April, Hart and a two-to-three person production crew will board an RV and begin traveling from Los Angeles to Canada, cooking in the kitchens of strangers, volunteering at food banks and in general spreading the Hart brand from coast to coast.

The inspiration for the tour, Hart says, came directly from the audience: “Ever since My Drunk Kitchen started, the community of ‘Hartosexuals’ — the audience, fans of the show — have said, ‘oh, I want you to come and cook in my kitchen, dude!’ Or, ‘you should do a travel show — I’d watch you do Anthony Bourdain any time!’.”

While that audience might have come as a result of Hart’s breakout work as the star of her series My Drunk Kitchen, this is not the My Drunk Kitchen Tour — instead, all information can be found at HelloHarto.com. That’s because this is the second phase of Hart’s web video journey.

The first phase began in 2011, when Hart got drunk at home one night and made a grilled cheese sandwich; the funny free spirit cooking sauces while sauced quickly grew a fanbase and was picked up by The Collective for representation.

But while My Drunk Kitchen has been a web hit, it has never had sponsorship, for one specific reason according to Hart: The word drunk, which scares off potential brands.

While MDK is only one part of Hart’s current YouTube output, it’s still the show she’s known best for — hence the new emphasis on the Harto brand. “The dedicated community who watches the the channel — they are the ones who know that it’s a Harto channel. The outside world thinks it’s a My Drunk Kitchen channel,” Hart says.

How do you go about this sort of rebranding? “Slow and steady wins the race,” she says. “I’m doing an entire tour around the world called Hello Harto.”

In recent months, Hart has spearheaded volunteer efforts at Los Angeles local food banks, bringing in fans to help organizations like the Los Angeles Food Bank. It’s something she wants to continue on the tour — however, thanks to the “D-word,” they’ve even had difficulties finding food banks to work with.

But during my initial interview with Hart, the production team finds out that the food bank network Feeding America has agreed to make introductions to local food banks along their tour stops — but with the stipulation, according to tour producer Pearl Wible, that Hello Harto and My Drunk Kitchen are separate entities.

“That makes it so much easier for us, because instead of having to explain to all these separate people what we’re about, we can work with organizations that will hoepfully be excited to work with us,” Hart said.

Hart, adding labels to envelopes for Indiegogo perk deliveries.

The Hello Harto tour is a clear turning point for Hart and her online presence. Hart says that while “My Drunk Kitchen will always be My Drunk Kitchen. It’s a funny joke,” the Harto brand is much bigger than that.

“Does this mean that in two years, My Drunk Kitchen will be a footnote on your Wikipedia page?” I ask.

“Absolutely,” Hart says, certain. “100 percent.”

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As the number of connected devices in a person’s home rises, it’s becoming apparent that the number of apps they have to use to control those devices increases as well. But UBE, which is launching a smart dimmer as well as an application, wants you to run all of your connected devices on their app. It will work with the WeMo, Wi-Fi connected TVs, consoles and a variety of other devices, says Glen Burchers of UBE.

“So if you want to connect your TV and lights, then when you sit down to watch TV, you can dim your lights,” Explains Burchers about what the app and Smart Dimmer can do. “Or you can set up your AC to raise or lower when you turn on the Kinect to do yoga.”

Setting the “scene” for home automation.

The CEO and cofounder of UBE comes from the high-end home automation industry where people hire companies to program certain “scenes” associated with living in a highly automated home. So when your garage door opens, your lights could turn on and music might play softly. The UBE app hopes to enable consumers to create these same scenarios using the UBE app and whatever IP-enabled device is out there.

It also hopes to use the tools to build ways to track energy consumption and then adapt the home’s lighting and other devices to conserve power. While, not exactly demand-response, since the homeowner is setting it up, the idea is that people will want to conserve if they have the tools to make it easy. And while UBE is building many of these apps, it’s keeping an open API so others can build devices and apps to work with the gear.

After the SmartDimmer the company has plans to release a wall plug if its Indiegogo campaign is successful.

The internet of things has a new funding model

UBE was founded in April last year and has so far raised $300,000 in seed funding as well as a $1 million check from winning the People’s Choice Award at the DEMO conference. The company has chosen to use Indiegogo to raise $700,000 to help fund production and to score customers ahead of raising a later round of venture funding at a better valuation.

That strategy is becoming a more common theme as it becomes easier to launch a hardware startup thanks to the proliferation of smartphones, 3-D printing and platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo. But another reason is that venture capitalists are eager to put money into companies pitching themselves as internet of things plays, while also being aware that the competition this realm consists of giant household consumer brands and hundreds of other startups.

Thus, VCs are both eager to invest — or listen — but they also want to see some traction before they invest and they tend to offer lower valuations based on what I’ve been told by entrepreneurs (although I take that with a grain of salt). So for UBE, it decided that before taking venture funds it wanted to try the market with a prototype and its story.

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Now, in addition to U.S. dollars, users can pledge support for projects using Euros, Pounds and Canadian dollars. Starting this month, Indiegogo will also offer full customer language support for French and German in addition to English. And starting early next year, Indiegogo will begin rolling out localized websites for British, German, French and Canadian users. Indiegogo is also looking at establishing a subsidiary in the U.K. in the first half of next year.

The better local support means French supporters, for example, will see campaigns that highlight local projects first. And campaign owners will now be able to create campaigns that run in multiple languages.

Previously, Indiegogo allowed people to start campaigns from 196 countries. But the service was still skewed toward U.S. users, who generate 70 percent of the activity. Indiegogo in August partnered with Google and Stiftung Entrepreneurship to create a startup competition in Germany, which was the first real localized effort from Indiegogo. Now, it’s looking to expand on its global promise by letting more people use the crowdfunding platform.

The move highlights again how big the opportunity is in crowdfunding. Indiegogo said it’s already helped launch more than 100,000 campaigns worldwide without much localization efforts. Kickstarter, meanwhile, said it got $3.3 million in pledges in its first month operating in the U.K.

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The popSLATE case is a new Indiegogo project that’s looking to raise$150,000 in funding over the next 48 days. I was skeptical about the case until I saw how the designers have implemented it in this video. Having a second screen is one thing, but being able to push information to it directly from the iPhone 5 shows some promise.

Depending on the software implementation, the ideas for using e-ink as a secondary screen are relatively limitless. You could have a custom case design with a picture that you or a friend snapped, for example. And you could easily change that picture at any time. Instead of double-tapping to switch between two apps — say some notes and a map — could be handled by flipping the phone from front to back. I see potential here.

The project team is also planning to release APIs so that app developers can add popSLATE integration in their software. Wouldn’t it be nice if some of the e-reader apps added support? I’m looking at you Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Using that second screen shouldn’t come at the cost of much power from the iPhone itself. The popSLATE uses a pass-through Lightning connector for data and power, so it will use juice from the handset. But e-ink only uses power when the display changes: Once a screen is rendered, it stays that way without using any additional power.

The early bird special to back the project and get a popSLATE is $79, with delivery expected in May 2013. That’s a discount from the planned $119 retail price if the popSLATE is funded.

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Speaking at Telefonica’s Campus Party Europe event in Berlin, Ringelmann told me that even if the SEC doesn’t implement the rule changes described in the JOBS Act, which aims to make investment crowdfunding legal, the company would consider allowing proper investments for projects outside the U.S..

“Our original vision was around investing and we pivoted towards non-investing given all the SEC regulations and the illegal nature of it,” she said.

The issue of raising funding for new companies through crowd platforms is developing fast right now. The JOBS Act has passed through the Senate, though the outcome of it will only be seen once the SEC reveals its revised regulations early next year.

But Ringelmann says that Indiegogo may use its global footprint to sidestep the issue in some cases — big rival Kickstarter is still mostly limited to the U.S., while Indiegogo makes much play of the fact that it’s operational around the world (it’s currently opening up its first non-English-language site in Germany, and just started accepting euros as well as dollars for the first time).

“The reason the JOBS Act passed was a lot of good work by a lot of people, but what really helped was our customers’ case studies,” Ringelmann claimed.

Those who opposed the Act have generally argued that throwing equity into the crowdfunding mix puts inexperienced investors at risk: essentially, that these people don’t fully understand what they’re
getting for their money.

Ringelmann chalks this up to a misunderstanding of the nature of crowdfunding. The way she sees it, crowdfunding is “fundamentally social” and will stay that way.

“It’s not a transactional experience, and we envision the social nature continuing,” she said. “When people raise money via crowdfunding, it’s rare you see a campaign raising 100 percent of its
funds from strangers. Nobody wakes up in the morning and funds a stranger they don’t know anything about. It’s human behavior for people to put money behind people they know, and we encourage campaign managers to reach out to friends and family, then Facebook and Twitter followers.”

“People trust a friend’s opinion, or see if the crowd has funded something. On the equity side I don’t see that changing a whole lot,” Ringelmann said. “What equity crowdfunding will unlock is the story of a local neighbourhood drycleaning shop being able to open, because it will be able to raise money from local people. I see the local coffee shops definitely benefiting the most.”

The logic makes some sense. If you throw cash at some recording project to get your name in the liner notes, or at some new gadget’s development to get one when it’s done, you know exactly what you’re
hoping to get. Make it a proper investment, with all the uncertainty that brings, and trust becomes even more of a factor.

If Indiegogo did go into the equity business, however, it wouldn’t be the first mover. Early players in this space include Seedrs in the UK and Innovestment, a kind of crowdfunding-auction hybrid, in Germany.

It does, however, suggest the direction that this industry may go.

It’s pretty clear that crowdfunding is something of a revolution: providing not only an alternative to traditional startup fundraising, but also an entirely new kind of boost for causes and artistic projects. But as with all revolutions, the fundamentals of crowdfunding are already starting to evolve.

It’s a concept that’s also starting to be mashed up with other startup-related projects in interesting ways. Case in point: Ringelmann was in Berlin to promote a new local startup competition and academy called Gründer Garage, in which Indiegogo is involved alongside Google.

The revolution isn’t over, not by a long shot.

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Crowdfunding site Kickstarter also processes payments through Amazon, but has not been affected by the change.

Amazon told Unglue.it CEO Eric Hellman that it is not approving new crowdfunding accounts due to “regulatory burdens” and “contractual obligations.” Unglue.it has been “required to void all pending authorizations,” though the one book that has already been unlocked – Oral Literature in Africa, a title aimed primarily at academics and librarians that raised $7,578 from 259 supporters — is not affected.

While some commenters on Twitter suspect Amazon of trying to take down a smaller ebook company, another small company received a similar notice and Hellman told me “it sounded like they want to be able to reverse course once they figure out how to meet their obligations efficiently.” Amazon’s policy is likely to affect any company that wants to process crowdfunding payments through the site. Paypal has a recommended process for crowdfunding payments and crowdfunding sites like Indiegogo and Togather process their payments through Paypal. A Paypal company rep did not respond to my request for comment, but a Paypal developer on Quora notes that any site processing crowdfunding payments, as well as any business oriented around them, has to worry about anti-money laundering policies. Hellman told Library Journal blog The Digital Shift that Paypal is still processing Unglue.it’s application.

Update: An Amazon spokesman told me, “We support a wide variety of businesses, but we have regulatory obligations as a licensed money services business for how we operate. Unfortunately, Unglue.it’s model is not the same as some other crowdfunding services and at this time does not allow us to meet those obligations.”

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Under increasing financial pressure from the web and the decline of print advertising, newspapers and other traditional media outlets have been laying off staff and trying to fill the gap with services such as Journatic — the hyperlocal aggregator that uses offshore workers — or simply doing without things like copy editors. But are there other solutions to that reporting gap? Crowdsourcing journalism through sites like Reddit could be one, but crowdfunding could be another: One journalist in Michigan has raised funding through a Kickstarter campaign so he can travel around the U.S. interviewing people about the upcoming election. Could crowdfunding allow other journalists to do investigative or in-depth projects as well?

Media blogger Jim Romenesko first called attention to the campaign by Chris Killian, a journalist from Kalamazoo who came up with the idea of driving through swing states like Iowa, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire in order to take what he calls the “pulse of the people.” On Sunday, just a few days after Romenesko’s report, Killian said he had reached his campaign goal, although it should be noted that it was not overly ambitious: He was only looking for $2,500 that he could use for living expenses, since he is planning to live and work out of his 1984 Volkswagen camper van ($2,000 of the total figure is for gas).

Could journalists crowdfund major projects?

Killian says he wants to get what he calls “grass-roots, organic and sincere stories” from everyday people about their lives and the economic prospects in their part of the U.S. He said he plans to talk to people of all political stripes and ask them “what we need to do differently to tackle the big challenges that we need to face to grow and prosper. Is the American Dream still alive?” The Michigan-based journalist, who is a staff writer for the newspaper in Kalamazoo but is also a freelance writer, says video and audio interviews will be available on a website for the project, called “Swing State Stories.”

Without meaning any offense to Killian, his project is definitely somewhat eccentric, and the amount he is asking for seems almost absurdly low. That’s especially when we are used to reading about a school-bus monitor who got more than $500,000 after being bullied by her charges or a young boy whose cardboard arcade at his father’s auto-parts store led to more than $200,000 being donated to his college fund. But could the core idea — raising money from potential readers for a specific project — work in principle for other journalistic pursuits? And would it work for mainstream media outlets, or just individuals?

The idea of crowdfunding journalism isn’t a new one: Journalist and entrepreneur David Cohn started a company called Spot.us in 2008 to do exactly that and had some notable successes, such as a feature on the “garbage patch” in the Pacific Ocean, a joint project with the New York Times. Earlier this year the company was acquired by American Public Media and merged with the Public Insight Network, and the website says it has more than 15,000 contributors and 110 publishing partners (Cohn has since moved on to a new project, a media startup called Circa).

Crowdfunding might work better for individuals

It’s probably fair to say Spot.us isn’t really a household name, however — at least, not in the same way that Kickstarter has become the poster child for crowdfunding of both products and causes (although the bus-monitor fundraising came through competitor Indiegogo). In that sense, using Kickstarter might be more likely to win journalists some awareness and credibility if they started a campaign for a specific research project, the way Killian has. I have seen estimates from newspaper editors that the typical investigative project requires about $200,000 in funding for a paper to pursue. Could that amount be crowdfunded? Perhaps.

That said, however, I’m not sure whether a platform like Kickstarter or Indiegogo or even Spot.us would work that well if a campaign were to be started by a major newspaper or the owner of a chain like Advance Publications, which has been laying off staff and shutting down printing at some of its newspapers. That kind of behavior isn’t likely to endear readers to the media outlet or make them want to donate money to it, whereas a unique or even eccentric project from an individual journalist like Killian seems to be more in the spirit of a Kickstarter campaign. Indie musician Amanda Palmer raised $1 million for a record and tour, but a record label would be unlikely to see the same kind of success.

It would be interesting to see other journalists experiment with the kind of thing Killian is doing, however. There have been some projects that fit a similar mold, including one in which an independent cartoonist and war correspondent raised money for a reporting trip to Afghanistan in 2010. Maybe Morgan Jones, the 18-year-old who turned a Reddit thread into a journalistic outlet during the recent shootings in Colorado, could raise money to turn his account on the site into a permanent reporting gig.

Update: I would be remiss if I didn’t mention one of the most prominent journalism-oriented Kickstarter campaigns — namely, a project called Matter, which is focused on publishing in-depth science journalism. According to co-founder Bobbie Johnson (Full disclosure: Bobbie is a GigaOM colleague who is based in England) the campaign is the best-financed journalism project ever on Kickstarter.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Tracy O.

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We have already seen Kickstarter, the popular crowdfunding platform, used to finance some fairly interesting media experiments, including books from authors like Seth Godin, record albums by artists like Amanda Palmer and even an entire magazine in the case of Matter. But could a publisher use the service to crowdfund its way out of the advertising-revenue trap in which many media companies find themselves? Penny Arcade, which publishes online comics and puts on related events, is trying to do exactly that with an ambitious Kickstarter campaign aimed at replacing the revenue it currently gets from advertising with funding from fans. But will it work? And could it provide a model for other media companies?

Penny Arcade is anything but a traditional publisher: It began as a simple video-game-oriented webcomic that writer Jerry Holkins and artist Mike Krahulik posted semi-regularly online in the late 1990s, and it has become a regular series with a number of associated real-world products (including several video games) and its own gaming conference called PAX. It is one of the longest-running webcomics around, and Holkins and Krahulik have made their living by publishing it for the past several years — in part by running advertising on the site where the comics appear.

Returning to a reader-centric model

In the early days of the comic, Holkins says the two founders managed to run everything through direct donations and sales of related products, but as the site grew bigger they figured they had to sell out and offer advertising in order to survive. But in the description of the Kickstarter campaign and a related blog post, he said eventually he and Krahulik wondered whether the platform would allow them to raise enough money to go back to a fully reader-funded model:

I think we had assumed it wasn’t possible to do it that way anymore — to operate a site at this scale without advertising dollars — but it occurred to us that we’d never actually asked. People often want to know how they can support the site in a way that doesn’t involve t-shirts or looking at advertising, and I think we may have a way. What I’m saying is that we want to sell out, and we would love to sell out to you.

The initial goal for the campaign, which ends on Aug. 15, is to raise $250,000, which the two founders say will allow them to dispense with banner advertising. If more money is raised, Holkins says the two will “restore old services we used to offer, convert the entire site to a Creative Commons license, and ultimately remove every ad from the site for an entire year.” The Penny Arcade founder says the larger idea behind the campaign is to become a company “that succeeds by making things, specifically things for you.”

The two co-founders have also made it fun for participants in the Kickstarter fund-raising effort by including bizarre or unusual offers as part of the different tiers of funding. So the $1 pledge says one character “will shout out your name as he chases a duck” and for $25 or more, another “will name your pet.” Higher pledge amounts come with a chance to be one of 50 people on the set when Penny Arcade films a movie version of the comic, and for a $5,000 donation a fan gets to come to Penny Arcade headquarters and hang out for an evening of pizza and games with the creators and other staff.

Could other publishers follow this model?

One of the people watching the campaign is Rob “Commander Taco” Malda, who founded the online community Slashdot and is now working on digital projects for the Washington Post and mentioned it on Twitter and his Google+ page. Could a Kickstarter campaign have saved Slashdot from having to be sold multiple times to different companies as it tried to keep the servers behind the community running? It’s an interesting question. Crowdfunding seems to have become so well established that it could theoretically give website publishers a lot more financial freedom.

Penny Arcade is doing a Kickstarter to remove all ads from the site for a year. This sort of thing really excites me. kickstarter.com/projects/57510…

—
Rob Malda (@cmdrtaco) July 10, 2012

The Penny Arcade experiment has a humorous tone, but the intent behind it is a serious one. By turning to its readers, Penny Arcade wants to become a totally reader-centric business that answers only to its fans and supporters. In some ways it’s the ultimate extension of the model the New York Times and other traditional publishers have taken with paywalls and other subscription plans, except Penny Arcade has come at it from the opposite direction: Instead of hitting readers with a paywall when they try to read something, it is asking for funding up front before the content has even been created.

Targeted publications like the Financial Times and the Economist seem to already be on the road toward this kind of model, with subscriptions surging ahead of advertising to make up more than half of the revenues at the FT in a recent period. Is this a model other media entities could pursue? Perhaps. But they would need to have as devoted a fan base as Penny Arcade, which by late Tuesday had already come up with almost a third of the amount the site was looking for in less than 24 hours.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Christian Scholz

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While it might be the future of content for those who already have the community to back it up, lower-profile projects seeking cash for their work are also managing to make an impact. Here are some samples of the sort of projects currently seeking funds on the Kickstarter scene, including a video game/fiction hybrid, a documentary about Calvin & Hobbes and a Soviet satire.

Sierra Zulu
The pitch: Austrian “art tech philosophy group” Monochrom seeks funds for a black sci-fi action comedy with political overtones — it’s a bit hard to explain, but here’s the plot summary:

A ragtag UN peacekeeping force operates a small camp guarding the no-man’s-land between Austria and the tiny agrarian microstate Soviet Unterzoegersdorf, the last existing bastion of the defunct Soviet Union. When an explosion occurs deep inside Soviet territory, the team is dragged into a bizarre conspiracy of industrial espionage, media madness and political intrigue. The knowledge economy? It’s about to get blown sky high…

The talent: Attached to appear in the film are Star Trek alumni Robert Picardo and Max Grodénchick, Buffy the Vampire Slayer‘s Amber Benson, Steve Wozniak and The Yes Men.

Perk of note: For a pledge of $23, you can adopt one frame of the film — only 2,980,770 are still available as of writing, though.

Current funding status: Over $5,400 of the $50,000 goal has been pledged. Deadline is July 30th.

A Drink With Dave: Season 2
The pitch: The production team behind the second season of Dave Holmes‘s low-key talk show seeks $30,000 to produce 80 more episodes. (Which breaks down as $375 an episode — good value for your dollar.)

The talent: In the first season of A Drink With Dave, Holmes interviewed comedians and web personalities including Rob Delaney, Michael Ian Black and Molly McAleer. For the second season of Dave Holmes’s informal talk show, folks like Paul F. Tompkins have been approached, but it “all depends on scheduling, so we can’t book anyone until the project is funded,” according to the project FAQ.

Perk of note: For a $100 pledge, “You introduce an episode AND tease the next episode. We’ll help you record a fun video or audio intro & tease, so that you’re a part of the show!”

Current funding status: About $7,800 of the $30,000 goal has been pledged. Deadline is July 11th.

Dear Mr. Watterson: A Calvin & Hobbes Documentary
The pitch: What began in 2007 as director Joel Schroeder’s documentary exploration of the iconic comic strip Calvin & Hobbes became a much bigger film after a 2010 Kickstarter campaign, which enabled the team to conduct interviews with some of the biggest names in the comics industry. Now, This campaign, according to the project listing, is “our KickFINISH Campaign, as that’s what we hope this’ll help us do: finish the film so that we can share it with all of you.” The funds raised will go towards scoring, music licensing, sound mixing and legal fees, hopefully leading to the film’s completion.

The talent: Those interviewed for the final film include Seth Green, FoxTrot creator Bill Amend, Bloom Country creator Berkeley Breathed, Rhymes With Orange creator Hilary Price and Knight Life creator Keith Knight.

Perk of note: For a $500 pledge, Schroeder writes, “I, Joel, the director of Dear Mr. Watterson, will write you a personal thank you note using a Calvin & Hobbes pad of paper I made in junior high school. And I’ll send it in an awesome homemade Calvin & Hobbes envelope.”

Current funding status: Over $72,000 has been raised, exceeding the $50,000 goal. Pledges are still being accepted, though; deadline is July 14th.

The Inn
The pitch: Steve Silverman, the creator of the award-winning web series Pretty, has teamed up with Buffy alum and Bandwagon creator Emma Caulfield for a new original thriller series.

The talent: Caulfield’s co-stars will include The Bannen Way‘s Mark Gantt, soap opera icon Denise Alexander, and others.

Perk of note: The person who makes the largest pledge will receive a personal phone call from Caulfield.

Current funding status: $880 of the $10,000 goal has been raised. Deadline is August 7th, though as the campaign is being run through Indiegogo, the project will receive all pledged funds, whether or not it meets that goal.

Neal Stephenson’s Clang
The pitch: Author Neal Stephenson has turned his attention from prose to video game development, and is spearheading a campaign to raise funds for a new sword-fighting simulator — one that accurately reflects the reality of swinging around steel. Clang will not only evolve into an open-source toolkit for others to develop their own sword-oriented games, but will also be the basis for a new fiction series, published through Amazon’s 47North imprint.

The talent: Stephenson’s the big name, but game companies Bungie and Valve are included in the project’s thanks. According to the project FAQ, Clang will be released on Valve’s Steam platform.

Perk of note: For a $10,000 pledge, not only do you get perks like multiple copies of Clang and your face on your own exclusive in-game character, but a “Gotlandic war knife based on a design by bladesmith Jeff Pringle (a wootz and pattern welding specialist). These are replicas of 8th century weapons… In those days, ‘war knife’ meant something akin to ‘short sword’ rather than ‘pocket knife.’”

Current funding status: Nearly $466,000 of the $500,000 goal has been pledged. Deadline is July 9th.

Any interesting projects you’re following? Tell us in the comments!

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Comedian Louis CK raised some eyebrows earlier this year when he sold downloads of a live show through his website and pulled in more than $1 million in about a week, despite the fact that fans could easily download the content for free. Now, he has done it again: instead of a traditional tour, he decided to sell tickets through his website, and sold $4.5-million worth in under 48 hours. Content creators of all kinds — authors, musicians and others — would do well to learn from his example, and that of others like Amanda Palmer, who recently financed a new album and tour through Kickstarter. The main lesson? Building a community is more important than ever.

Louis CK (whose real name is Louis Szekely) was far from being an unknown when he launched his download experiment in December: he had a show on Comedy Central the FX network that was fairly successful, and had appeared on late-night talk shows — but he was far from being a top-tier name. But one thing CK did have was a community of fans, and he tapped into that when he offered a self-financed show to them as both a live-stream and a download. And he deliberately didn’t encrypt the show with digital-rights management locks or barriers, because he said he wanted to make it as frictionless as possible for fans.

As I pointed out at the time, media companies of all kinds could learn a lot from that approach — including the lack of DRM controls and the power of the community that CK was able to draw on. Tens of thousands of fans paid $5 for that show even though they could have easily downloaded it for nothing. His latest move, in which he offered single-price tickets for a 39-city tour through his website, built on that community and created a sold-out $4.5-million tour in less than 48 hours. That’s an incredibly powerful example of going direct to your fans.

Can giving content away result in more money?

This kind of model isn’t necessarily restricted to individuals either, as Union Square Ventures partner Andrew Weissman points out in a blog post about the TED conference entitled “What If We Give It Away.” As he notes, the conference has spent the past couple of years giving its content away for nothing — via videos on its website and elsewhere, and also through the branding of free TED spinoffs called TEDx conferences in cities around the world. As Weissman notes:

[B]y giving away what one would generally think of as a company’s (a media entity) greatest assets – its content, brand and business processes – the business has grown enormously in just a few short years.

On the individual front, musician Amanda Palmer is another great example of this approach: she quit her record label in 2010 and decided recently to fund a new album and tour directly by allowing her fans to donate through Kickstarter. Her original goal was $100,000 — but she blew through that figure in a matter of hours after the launch, and by the end of the campaign had raised ten times that amount or almost $1.2 million. In return for the funds, fans get a variety of rewards, including a signed art book, an invitation to special dinners and parties for fans in a number of cities, and so on.

One thing that’s important to note about both of these examples is that CK and Palmer didn’t just pull in a huge amount of money and walk off to do whatever they wanted with it: both of them have spent a lot of time detailing what exactly will happen to the funds, with Palmer in particular posting an itemized breakdown of her expenses for the album and the tour so that her fan community realizes what is involved. Louis CK, meanwhile, gave a substantial portion of the money he made from his downloadable show to charity, and wrote about that.

Building on those “1,000 true fans”

Authors can also benefit from this kind of community, and there are any number of examples: self-published young-adult fiction writer Amanda Hocking made more than $2 million without an agent or a traditional publisher by distributing her e-books through Amazon’s Kindle platform, and author John Green managed to get his new e-book to the number one spot on the best-seller list before the book was even completed — because his community of fans was already connected to him on multiple levels, including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

This kind of community engagement has always been important: the band The Grateful Dead was legendary for allowing fans to tape its live shows and share that content, and other artists such as Jonathan Coulton have also made a living while still giving away much of their content for free (Coulton is also a thoughtful commenter on the issues around copyright infringement). Radiohead and Girl Talk have both used the “pay what you want” model for album downloads, which show — just as Louis CK has — that fans will pay even when they can get the content for nothing.

What has happened is that the web and social media — along with crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo — have added more horsepower to the concept that Wired magazine founding editor Kevin Kelly described as “1,000 True Fans.” In that model, trying to become the next global superstar through traditional media is replaced by connecting with a loyal fan base and then engaging with them, whether it’s to fund a tour or an album or a book (marketer and author Seth Godin is funding his new book through Kickstarter).

Can anyone make use of this new model? Obviously it helps to have already established a brand, as Louis CK and Amanda Palmer have (or Seth Godin and TED). And there may be no easy parallel to the concert tour when it comes to some kinds of content — but the power of connecting directly to your fans, however small that group might be, can’t be underestimated. And whether its record labels or publishing houses or media companies, former intermediaries and gatekeepers of all kinds are going to have to try a lot harder to prove that they are adding some value to that process in order to survive.

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr users Christian Scholz and Giuseppe Bognanni

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