Can Fans Feed Tiki Bar TV’s Appetite for Profit

I’ve never been much of a fan of the pretty darn popular and long-running webseries Tiki Bar TV.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with the show, however, as they’ve proven by growing a solid fanbase and and escaping the most common fate among webseries producers – attrition.

In fact, things seem to be going so well at Tiki Bar TV that they are implementing a “premium” membership:

The new “Membership” plan, allows fans a slew of privileges including downloads of full HD (720p) episodes in Dolby 5.1 Surround sound, a 15% discount on all official Tiki merchandise and access to members-only events like a recent Happy Hour at Tiki Bar HQ. Priced at $49 annually, enrollment appears to be exceeding expectations. Tiki Bar producer Tosca Musk said so far she has “about two days worth of membership cards to print up.” LINK

Now, I’m not sure how fast Musk’s printer churns out cards, so it is hard to say just how much income is being generated.  At $50/member they need 5000 members to gross $250,000.  There is also some money being made from merchandise but it is hard to gauge how much.  Of course, there must be some ad rev-share going on, too.

When looked at in these terms it is not inconceivable that this little webseries could gross somewhere between $100,000-$500,000 with a lot of effort.  That leaves two big questions:

1) What are Tiki Bar TV’s expenses and how many people are trying to earn a living from the show?

2) Are there really thousands of people will to pay $50/year for a program that is essentially still available for free?

I am rooting for Tiki Bar TV.  In this new world of narrowcasting and independent everything, it would be nice to know that hard work, a good idea and a business model might be able to support a few people.

Oh, here, check out an episode:

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