Okay, I can't just let people keep repeating this. $30k for a promo of this magnitude is not absurd in the least. This thing blew up huge, and it went off huge without a hiccup. If you just hire some low-ball bidder who knows how to slap together some APIs what guarantee do you have that it won't crash and burn under load? If that happens in seed-stage startup, oh boohoo, you disappointed your 100 early adopter friends, you learn from the mistake and you iterate, no experience necessary. If you do it with a viral promo that cost you hundreds of thousands to produce you just threw 90% of your potential millions right down the toilet and you probably end up crawling back to your bitter paymasters who are not feeling particularly generous after being cut out of the last big deal.

You hire people who know what the fuck their doing. No one here knows all the edge cases and planning that went into it. It looks super simple, but that is the brilliance of it. It looks effortless because it so well achieved. It's disappointing to me that HN members would dismiss this as just combining a bunch of commodity components and calling it a day. Just because you fancy that you could churn this out in a week of working 14 hour days with your buddy like you do for your startup doesn't mean that people doing this professionally shouldn't charge $250/hr to do it. Remember, they have no upside, and should charge a proper fee for their expertise.

I'm not really arguing about whether $30k was too much or too little. That's beside the point.

The point is that it shouldn't cost every comedian who wants to follow Louis CK's lead $30k to setup their own site. It would be a total waste of time and money, not to mention limit the number of people capable of emulating him.

Think about why Shopify, Weebly, Blogger, Wordpress exist. Every person who wanted an online store or web site of any kind used to have to pay people thousands of dollars to get a custom one made.

Alright then, my UX-nerd-rage having subsided, I agree with that. However I think there still is room for a custom crafted experience. Just reading both Gaffigan's and CK's pitches you can feel the difference in polish. Gaffigan is funny, but his message just isn't as on-point.

Design: $2k, coding: $5k, convincing Louis CK to use you over everyone else in the world for the most important moment of his career to date: $23k.

And honestly, given the results, they undercharged.

Just because it snags my overliteral nerd brain: this wasn't the most important moment of Louis CK's career. Louis CK is a giant of modern standup comedy.

Perhaps more accurate to say "if the site had fallen over, he would have looked like a total asshole, lost a ton of money, and no mainstream entertainer would even dream of trying something similar for a decade."

We're talking about someone with multiple seasons of an eponymous show on FX, a full season of an eponymous show on HBO, and numerous HBO standup specials, along with a studio film director credit, all this following a long career as a TV writer, and we think this Internet special was somehow his break?

I don't know, maybe you'll be right in the long run, but I'd bet against you being right.

I'll put it differently: Louis CK will end up being more important to the Internet than the Internet will be important to Louis CK.

>Why is it not the most important moment of his career?

is not a serious question, esp. in light of tptacek's laundry list which you are replying to - it's really up to you to make a positive case rather than up to the universe to make a negative one; and:

>how many [of the thousands and thousands of CK-level entertainers over a hundred years] have done anything resembling this recent special?

is not a serious argument, though it seems to be a declaration that selling his own movie has made him the greatest entertainer (at his level) in history, which is funny.

Well thanks for piling on. I know you can't down vote this, but I'll leave it here for someone else to do so.

1. "We developed this system for comedians to do exactly what Louis CK did. You pay based on usage (no large upfront capital risk), it's ready now, and here's a demo so you can see how nice it is."

VS

2. "We could totally develop this site for you. It'll probably cost around $30k and take a 6-8 weeks. Trust us."

In both cases it's going to require salesmanship but I'd feel a lot more confident about selling #1. And of course once you've had a few successful clients #1 get's even easier -- you just point to them.

Compared to what a comedian would pay for venue, cameras, producing, directing and editing, the slack between what Louis paid and could have paid for his site and streaming setup is probably the least of their concerns.

That it worked and held up under load is probably going to keep them from even asking if it could have been cheaper.

It's not just the money. It's finding a web development company, meeting with them multiple times, risking $30k (which is not chump change even to him), and waiting for the site to be developed, giving feedback, etc.

They used PayPal + S3 to do Louis CK's site. This kind of thing isn't very technically challenging anymore with the infrastructure that's available now.

I agree that there's a huge opportunity for digital publishers in this area. I just think it's going to be a market driven by the companies that can take someone from material through polish, production, promotion and then distribution.

Just as today there do exist companies that press CDs and companies that box CDs and companies that ship CDs from one warehouse to many retailers yet the market is truly driven by those who can take an artist from material to digital master. Everyone downstream is commoditized and generally gets or loses contracts based on shmoozing rather than merit.

I'm sure there's money in being the digital equivalent of the plucky independent CD printer/boxer/shipper. But you're going to have a hell of a time getting business from people who don't have a digital master yet (and most won't), regardless of how attractive your rates may be. And in the process of those people getting a digital master - they're likely going to be steered toward the distribution services recommended by those people who helped them create and promote that master.

Isn't this something that gumroad does? (https://gumroad.com/)

That looks almost good. Unfortunately it seems they only accepts direct credit card payment. Many users wouldn't trust them.

Integrate with PayPal or Google Checkout and it could be huge.

Pulley from Big Cartel let's you sell downloadable files as well. (http://pulleyapp.com/)