We're having cake! Would you like a slice?

I know, I know, it isn’t cool to talk about your views and your stats. But this is a big milestone for Tights and Fights: Ashes, so I thought a short celebratory post here wouldn’t be so out of line.

I just noticed that we passed 10,000 upload views on our main YouTube channel, Tights and Fights.

We were hoping to hit this mark around next week or the end of the month, so we’re a tiny bit ahead of schedule. (The first time we haven’t been scrambling to make a deadline!) The reason we reached this target today is due to a series of misadventures with Google Adwords.

We knew we could bring in a certain number of views just organically and through promotion. We were getting around 1000 veiws a week, and while we had better days and worse days, it looked like we were holding steady. So we thought we would turn on our advertising to our YouTube channel and see what happens.

It was around then that we discovered that some of our other show sites had been hacked. We had no idea that visitors were being redirected to other, less than savoury destinations until Google pulled our Adwords account. It was a bit of ashock – mostly for poor Christopher as he is managing all of that.

That meant we need to rely on the new Adwords account we were setting up. The problem – Google makes no guarantee of when they will approve your campaign. The web isn’t really set up for split second timing. Most websites apply for their campaign and sit back and wait until whenever it gets approved. It can take up to 4 months! Well, we didn’t want to wait four months.

And Christopher had a plan.

He had read somewhere (don’t ask me where he gets this stuff) that Google may be more inclined to approve your campaign in a hurry of you are spending more money. So we upped our ad bid from about $10 a day (which we were going to use as a short of shake down campaign) to $400 a day. Still no word.

(As a quick aside to those who don’t know, in these cases you bid a certain daily budget, and whenever someone clicks on your ad, you spend a penny or whatever the click rate is for your exact keywords.)

No word, that is, until we showed up this morning to discover that not only the campaign had been approved, but we had already spent our full bid!

YouTube is weird for tracking stats. I have learned to accept that anything sooner than a full week in the past isn’t really a reliable figure – your view counts continue to change as YouTube catches up. So we think our numbers will continue to climb as YouTube tracks the mass number of people who clicked on our ad and were transported to our YouTube channel.

But for right now, we have officially passed 10,000 views on our main channel. Added to those view number are the views on our secondary YouTube Channels and visits to our website, etc. So, we’re happy with that. Even if it was a surprise!

As a quick additional note, it also seems like our strategy of having lots of short videos is working beautifully. The idea is that whatever efforts we do to bring in a single view is leveraged and amplified by a bulk of content. For instance, say we spent 1 dollar to being in 1 view – if that person watches 10 episodes, it lowers our real costs from 1 dollar a view to 10 cents a view. (Or if we spent 10 minutes tweeting or in YouTube activity to bring that view in, the amplifier idea still applies.)

We designed Tights and Fights: Ashes to be very discoverable on the internet. And so far, so good.

During our soft launch, we’ve been posting episodes for those of you who subscribed to our production blog here at Gopherx.net.

We thank you for watching (we really, really do!) but now that our official website has launch – pictures from the party are coming soon! – we will no longer be notifying you about each episode in this blog.

We’ll have lots of other goodies to share with you – as much as we can squeeze into our days and weeks to tell you about. So no need to cancel your subscription here.

But to continue receiving updates about each episode, go here…

http://www.tightsandfights.com/how-to/

The above link will take you to a page on our new site that all kinds of helpful hints to keep you on top of all the wacky super powered goings on.

There’s a new episode up today! If you just want to jump to the episode while you’re subscribing to our main website, here it is!

Episode 17 “Shopping for Super Clothes”

Robert Strovesco begins his search for Captain Euchre in the likeliest of places — The Internet.

Welcome to Episode 16!

Another Episode featuring Scott Watkins as The Plumber. The Plumber knows he has to find Captain Euchre… maybe the internet can help?

Robert Strovesco has a pleasant conservation with his Uncle Sal in an attempt to get his job back.

The Plumber tries to convince Uncle Sal to give him his job back. It doesn’t go so well.

Hope you’re enjoying watching the episodes! Do you have a favourite character yet?

The Major worries that his inactivity might not be going over so well with his wife and, naturally, he resents her for it. No matter. With the sound advice of his former cellmate Tubsy for inspiration, Faultline devises a plan to rejoin Ronin Force and restore his respectability.

We haven’t heard too much from the Major – unless you have been following him on Twitter, that is!

Last Thursday we had our first live Twitter performance. We didn’t tell too many people about it, because we wanted to use it as something as a dry run. But it does explain why the Major is jacketless in this video!

When our new website launches on November 12, it’ll be easy to peek in and see all the various elements of the show. For now, if you want to see what went down with Leopard Woman and The Major, you can click here!

Twitter Performance List

We’re still working out the bugs, so to read it in order you’ll have to scroll down until you see these posts…

It’s easiest if you look for posts from Tights and Fights. There’s less of them, so they stand out more.

We hope you enjoy today’s episode!

Hold your applause until the-- Nah, go ahead!

Hola, Scott here!

It’s been a while since I last posted any actual news here – there was a lot more time to do stuff like that before we started posting episodes! We hope that you’re enjoying them, we’re pretty exciting to be sharing them with you.

But actually, we’ve got a few announcements, and they are interrelated, so I thought that I might as well put them into this one post. So here goes!

Bump Two Filming starts in December!

That’s right. The sixty episodes that we have already shot, and are currently releasing online, only takes us a third of the way through the story. We have are moving ahead on production of the next sixty!

What can you expect from them? How about time travel, monkeys, ninjas, split personalities, Fantabulous Gal as a cleaning service mogul, an evil robot invasion of Leopardia – Leopard Woman’s kingdom in the middle of the planet, The Plumber goes undercover… and much much more!

We’re going into prep in November, just as we’re approaching our official launch on November 12. Busy, busy month – we hope you think it is worth it!

Okay, on to related exciting annoucement #2!

Table Read for Bump Two is tomorrow!

For the second time, we’re gathering all of our cast and key crew together to hear all the scripts from Bump Two out loud. This is a crucial testing ground for jokes and storylines – trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. What needs to be punched up and what needs to be left alone, even though the joke may not be fresh to you two years after you wrote it.

The table read is also a nice chance to have everyone gathered in one spot – one of the few times that this happens for our oversize, sprawling production.

We’ll let you know how it goes! And then it’s on to the punch up room sessions, where the scripts get rewritten (again) and many laughs spill out of the boardroom here at the Gopher Hole.

And speaking of writing, here’s related and exciting announcement #3!

Live Transmedia Performances Start This Week!

Some of you who follow our characters on twitter or YouTube have already noticed they have started chatting with each other, and the occasional ‘civilian.’ That’s what we call our ‘low intensity’ Transmedia activities – and we’re only just getting our feet wet with those. But this week, we’ll be doing our first, live Transmedia performance!

Because we’re thinking of this as a bit of a test run, I’m not going to give you any times or dates here. Rest assured, if you follow us on Twitter, you’ll get more info. (If you don’t – why not?) This first performance will be low key, and low stress, but as we get our sea legs you’ll be hearing a lot more about these performances – and you’ll see why we call this show the most Transmedia story ever told!

The real fun part of these performances is that you can join in! We’re looking to get our audience to be as involved with how the plot unfolds us the characters themselves. It’s like an improvised scene that anyone can be a part of! Exciting, no?

So that’s it for the announcements right now. But watch this space – there’ s plenty of surprises still to come!

Trojan Borscht has stolen a missile but has no idea where he got it from, especially since he is Canada. He names his missile Barry.

Meet Barry! Barry plays a big role in the arc of our ‘Bump 1.”

We’ve been chomping at the bit to share Barry with you since we started posting! We hope that you are surprised!

You like Bary? Let us know!

Evil Trojan Borscht is bored… Careful what you wish for!

Trivia time! First person to to go our Tights and Fights Facebook page and correctly tell us what the phrase “Going My Way” is referencing will win a signed photo of our cast!

Also, I am quite partial to the Scott Pilgrim joke in this episode. I think it is very Trojy, and quite funny if I do say so myself.

Fantabulous Gal does some serious rationalizing when she moves into her ex-boss’s apartment while DynaGal’s in the loony bin.

We finally get another check in from Fantabulous Gal! She needs a place to stay, her old boss is catatonic… sounds perfect, n’est pa?

Leopard Woman celebrates her promotion as head of Ronin Force.

Leopard Woman has a good day, except for Major Hubby’s bitterness. The only real problem is that now she might actually have to start looking for the missing Captain Euchre…