BenHalkum
Reverend Asshole
I wanted to share this here, to give you guys a glimpse of what I'll be delivering over at the eW Blog soon. I've found myself deciding to step back from branching out so much and begin delivering articles from my years in the game. We haven't had any real good How To guides in a long time. i figure since I began eW in 1996, I have enough under my belt I can maybe give back like this. If you enjoy it comment. It'd be cool to see some comments on the eW Blog page, but here is fine as well. 
Also, please, check out the Blog for updates and more like this. I'm also on Twitter at @BLOGeW, where I post and retweet a lot. Great place to get some free advertising from me. Either way, hope someone enjoys.
SECRETS TO OPENING A NEW FED, AND SUCCEEDING
Originally at http://www.ew-blog.com/?p=723
Nine out of every ten new e-feds don't really ever get off of the ground these days. Whether is be lack of interest, lack of roster, or other factors, people seem to have difficulty opening an e-fed and keeping it going for more than five months. What I wanted to do today is share my secret of how a motivated and dedicated fed head can guarantee success within three to four months if not earlier. You may be asking yourself, "Three to four months, why do I want to wait that long?!" Obviously, you do not have the patience nor dedication to utilize the tips I am about to give you. You may as well quit reading now and go open your thirtieth e-fed this year.
No, what I want to do is speak to the people truly in it for the long run. The people who either have a ton of fed head experience, or none at all but have a vision for something that will stick and last. Now, I am not guaranteeing that this will in fact work 100% for you, as it all boils down to just how good you really are at your output. But it has worked for me, a lot. Any e-fed I have opened up in the last eight years, I have followed these steps and they have worked. I have had popular e-feds with a full, stacked roster. Even after "flaking" I was still able to bring people into a new fed, or back even from my last, using these steps.
I bet you're wishing I'd get to it already. Once again, patience is key. The tips I am about to give you require patience. Don't forget about that motivation or dedication I spoke of earlier. There is work involved, and a lot of it. This isn't a get big quick scheme. You will put more fed head work in than you are used to, but the pay off is what is golden. So, what are you waiting for? Let's open a fed!
Oh, that's right. You need to know what to do to prepare. Well, here you go.
PREPARATION
OK, so you woke up one day and decided, "Well, hell, I think I wanna run a fed today." Cool! New feds are fun, glad you decided to come here and get some direction. Let's begin on the before launch preparation.
1. First and foremost, don't tell anyone yet about this idea to start a fed. Seriously, just don't unless you got someone who will be helping you. No AIM conversations, no "hype" on message boards. Trust me; stop now if you already clicked on the "Create New Post" button in the ad portion of FWrestling.
A common mistake people make is as soon as they decide to open a fed and start the hype process. I can guarantee you if Travis Beaven was to want to restart the fWo today, no one would know outside of one or two people who will help him would know for weeks if not months. If you can't help yourself but start telling the world about it, then you probably should just go fail and come back.
2. Decide on the basics and get them together.
What type of fed do you want to run? Is it role-play or angle? How many people do you want in the fed (This is your base number)? What direction do you want to go? These are all very important questions and must have items. Hell, what do you wan to name the fed? You’d be amazed how much research I put into just the name alone. Open up a Word document or Power point and get to planning. When would you like to begin writing shows? You HAVE to get everything together. If you run into it without a plan, then you have a better chance of failing.
3. Hosting, design, scripting… all that jazz.
Get it out of the way now. You have your plan; you have your name, get this basic stuff done next. Either yourself, or have someone do it. Either way, get the basic template of things up. Make sure to do all the standard pages. You know? About us, application, etc and so on. Trust me, you want to knock this out now because soon is the hard stuff. Grab your hosting and domain. May I suggest ewrestler.net for hosting?
OK, so now you have your idea, you have your basic site and you’re ready to go! Not so fast. Seriously, quit trying to hype your stuff at this point publicly. You still have a lot of work to do if you ant to use my steps to succeed. I guess if you hadn’t already tried it your way and failed, you wouldn’t be reading this far would you? Lets keep going.
4. Reach out to the guaranteed ones.
Most people have those one or two friends who are guaranteed to join your fed no matter what. Whoever these people are, reach out to them and recruit them now. This will give you the current number to work off the rest of the steps. Personally, I have maybe three or four people I can guarantee will also join a start up with me and I reach out to them immediately. Don’t let them confirm then be lazy. The NEED to fill their roster out now, and know they will be starting to participate soon.
5. Subtract your current number from your base number to achieve you’re NPC number.
Here’s where it starts to come into place. Remember the base number from your planning stages? You probably picked someplace between 12 and 20 characters you want to have in your fed. Subtract the current number you got in step 4 from the base number. You now have what is called your NPC number. This will more than likely be between 8 and 12 in most cases, maybe more and maybe less.
Here’s where your motivation and dedication come into play. How serious are you really about getting the project off he ground and being successful?
6. Create the NPCs.
Take that NPC number and create a new character for each one. This includes name, full bio, and everything. Yea, you need to be creative enough to come up with a shit ton of characters. Go ahead, do it. I’ll wait.
7. Book the first card.
You have your site complete, a full roster (which is a mix between your guarantees and NPCs, or maybe even all NPCs), and you’re ready to go. Go ahead and book your first card. I suggest all real handlers be in the upper cards. They are actual handlers; you need to cater to them right now. Maybe even have them against NPCs, so they are guaranteed a win. Keep in mind, nowhere in my steps did I ever tell you to let them in on the fact the other people are NPCs. Go ahead, book them against an NPC and let things happen. The real handlers get that boost of confidence they need to keep going.
8. Get ready to get really busy.
Remember all those NPCs you created and booked? If this is a RP fed, you need to role-play for them. Yes, all of them. Don’t spend your time doing anything even remotely good. Throw whatever random BS you want to in these RPs, trust me, it does NOT matter. This will be a lot of work
9. Deliver the first show.
Whatever your time between shows is, go through the motions. Update the website as needed, do some news post, and for the love of God deliver your “first” show ON TIME. Now the standard has been set.
10. Book card number two.
You have a show under your belt, all of your real handlers are happy they won their match, book the second show and get ready to start the hype machine.
BEGIN THE HYPE
OK, so I called it hype, but really it is that motion you go through when you start advertising your fed. This is where you begin bombarding friends on IM, and posting on forums. Maybe even buy some RoughKut advertising space. Whatever just begin to advertise. Want to know what is different this time compared to the failed attempts? Not only do you already have people on your roster, but you have a full show under your belt AND content on your website.
About once a week, hit all the major outlets again until you have your desired full roster size. I’d suggest also creating a Twitter and Facebook page for the fed at this point and utilize it to add some social interaction. This creates free buzz when others start sharing and retweeting
PUT IN WORK
There is the major secret, people are more inclined to join an e-fed who can produce and have produced. Here’s the tricky part now, maintaining what you are doing until you can relax. You must continue to book cards, offer site updates, role-play (or do segments if an angle fed) for a while. Sometimes just a few weeks, sometimes a few months. Just rinse and repeat the steps from the first section. Every time you get a new, real handler, remove one NPC from your roster. No need to make a big deal about it, just send them to an alumni section or delete them altogether.
SUCCESS!
Doing this, you will eventually replace all of your NPC characters with real handlers. Another plus is if for some reason down the line the fed starts hurting a bit for handlers, just re-activate a “popular” NPC and you have a story with history to pad your shows with while you recruit more.
There you have it. Don’t believe that this will work for you? You wont know until you try it. Remember my fed DREAM? First 5 shows where filled with NPCs. Death Row? It started with 75% NPC characters. Following these steps exactly and you will see a difference. Why set yourself up for failure if you really aspire to open a fed for the long run? Put the work in, put the time, and most impotently deliver great stuff!
None of this will work if you churn out mediocre site content and results. The RPs are one thing, as most people only care about RPs when starting a fed to judge if they have a chance to be a star compared to everyone else. It’s good to have crappy RPs for them to look at. It gives them a sense of “I can beat ALL these people and be the champ!” thus motivating them.
Working hard to make sure the site is updated with fresh stuff and your shows are good, and on time, you will draw people. Go ahead and try it. I can’t wait to see some new feds pop up! If you try my method, please, let me know how it turns out for you!
Also, please, check out the Blog for updates and more like this. I'm also on Twitter at @BLOGeW, where I post and retweet a lot. Great place to get some free advertising from me. Either way, hope someone enjoys.SECRETS TO OPENING A NEW FED, AND SUCCEEDING
Originally at http://www.ew-blog.com/?p=723
Nine out of every ten new e-feds don't really ever get off of the ground these days. Whether is be lack of interest, lack of roster, or other factors, people seem to have difficulty opening an e-fed and keeping it going for more than five months. What I wanted to do today is share my secret of how a motivated and dedicated fed head can guarantee success within three to four months if not earlier. You may be asking yourself, "Three to four months, why do I want to wait that long?!" Obviously, you do not have the patience nor dedication to utilize the tips I am about to give you. You may as well quit reading now and go open your thirtieth e-fed this year.
No, what I want to do is speak to the people truly in it for the long run. The people who either have a ton of fed head experience, or none at all but have a vision for something that will stick and last. Now, I am not guaranteeing that this will in fact work 100% for you, as it all boils down to just how good you really are at your output. But it has worked for me, a lot. Any e-fed I have opened up in the last eight years, I have followed these steps and they have worked. I have had popular e-feds with a full, stacked roster. Even after "flaking" I was still able to bring people into a new fed, or back even from my last, using these steps.
I bet you're wishing I'd get to it already. Once again, patience is key. The tips I am about to give you require patience. Don't forget about that motivation or dedication I spoke of earlier. There is work involved, and a lot of it. This isn't a get big quick scheme. You will put more fed head work in than you are used to, but the pay off is what is golden. So, what are you waiting for? Let's open a fed!
Oh, that's right. You need to know what to do to prepare. Well, here you go.
PREPARATION
OK, so you woke up one day and decided, "Well, hell, I think I wanna run a fed today." Cool! New feds are fun, glad you decided to come here and get some direction. Let's begin on the before launch preparation.
1. First and foremost, don't tell anyone yet about this idea to start a fed. Seriously, just don't unless you got someone who will be helping you. No AIM conversations, no "hype" on message boards. Trust me; stop now if you already clicked on the "Create New Post" button in the ad portion of FWrestling.
A common mistake people make is as soon as they decide to open a fed and start the hype process. I can guarantee you if Travis Beaven was to want to restart the fWo today, no one would know outside of one or two people who will help him would know for weeks if not months. If you can't help yourself but start telling the world about it, then you probably should just go fail and come back.
2. Decide on the basics and get them together.
What type of fed do you want to run? Is it role-play or angle? How many people do you want in the fed (This is your base number)? What direction do you want to go? These are all very important questions and must have items. Hell, what do you wan to name the fed? You’d be amazed how much research I put into just the name alone. Open up a Word document or Power point and get to planning. When would you like to begin writing shows? You HAVE to get everything together. If you run into it without a plan, then you have a better chance of failing.
3. Hosting, design, scripting… all that jazz.
Get it out of the way now. You have your plan; you have your name, get this basic stuff done next. Either yourself, or have someone do it. Either way, get the basic template of things up. Make sure to do all the standard pages. You know? About us, application, etc and so on. Trust me, you want to knock this out now because soon is the hard stuff. Grab your hosting and domain. May I suggest ewrestler.net for hosting?
OK, so now you have your idea, you have your basic site and you’re ready to go! Not so fast. Seriously, quit trying to hype your stuff at this point publicly. You still have a lot of work to do if you ant to use my steps to succeed. I guess if you hadn’t already tried it your way and failed, you wouldn’t be reading this far would you? Lets keep going.
4. Reach out to the guaranteed ones.
Most people have those one or two friends who are guaranteed to join your fed no matter what. Whoever these people are, reach out to them and recruit them now. This will give you the current number to work off the rest of the steps. Personally, I have maybe three or four people I can guarantee will also join a start up with me and I reach out to them immediately. Don’t let them confirm then be lazy. The NEED to fill their roster out now, and know they will be starting to participate soon.
5. Subtract your current number from your base number to achieve you’re NPC number.
Here’s where it starts to come into place. Remember the base number from your planning stages? You probably picked someplace between 12 and 20 characters you want to have in your fed. Subtract the current number you got in step 4 from the base number. You now have what is called your NPC number. This will more than likely be between 8 and 12 in most cases, maybe more and maybe less.
Here’s where your motivation and dedication come into play. How serious are you really about getting the project off he ground and being successful?
6. Create the NPCs.
Take that NPC number and create a new character for each one. This includes name, full bio, and everything. Yea, you need to be creative enough to come up with a shit ton of characters. Go ahead, do it. I’ll wait.
7. Book the first card.
You have your site complete, a full roster (which is a mix between your guarantees and NPCs, or maybe even all NPCs), and you’re ready to go. Go ahead and book your first card. I suggest all real handlers be in the upper cards. They are actual handlers; you need to cater to them right now. Maybe even have them against NPCs, so they are guaranteed a win. Keep in mind, nowhere in my steps did I ever tell you to let them in on the fact the other people are NPCs. Go ahead, book them against an NPC and let things happen. The real handlers get that boost of confidence they need to keep going.
8. Get ready to get really busy.
Remember all those NPCs you created and booked? If this is a RP fed, you need to role-play for them. Yes, all of them. Don’t spend your time doing anything even remotely good. Throw whatever random BS you want to in these RPs, trust me, it does NOT matter. This will be a lot of work
9. Deliver the first show.
Whatever your time between shows is, go through the motions. Update the website as needed, do some news post, and for the love of God deliver your “first” show ON TIME. Now the standard has been set.
10. Book card number two.
You have a show under your belt, all of your real handlers are happy they won their match, book the second show and get ready to start the hype machine.
BEGIN THE HYPE
OK, so I called it hype, but really it is that motion you go through when you start advertising your fed. This is where you begin bombarding friends on IM, and posting on forums. Maybe even buy some RoughKut advertising space. Whatever just begin to advertise. Want to know what is different this time compared to the failed attempts? Not only do you already have people on your roster, but you have a full show under your belt AND content on your website.
About once a week, hit all the major outlets again until you have your desired full roster size. I’d suggest also creating a Twitter and Facebook page for the fed at this point and utilize it to add some social interaction. This creates free buzz when others start sharing and retweeting
PUT IN WORK
There is the major secret, people are more inclined to join an e-fed who can produce and have produced. Here’s the tricky part now, maintaining what you are doing until you can relax. You must continue to book cards, offer site updates, role-play (or do segments if an angle fed) for a while. Sometimes just a few weeks, sometimes a few months. Just rinse and repeat the steps from the first section. Every time you get a new, real handler, remove one NPC from your roster. No need to make a big deal about it, just send them to an alumni section or delete them altogether.
SUCCESS!
Doing this, you will eventually replace all of your NPC characters with real handlers. Another plus is if for some reason down the line the fed starts hurting a bit for handlers, just re-activate a “popular” NPC and you have a story with history to pad your shows with while you recruit more.
There you have it. Don’t believe that this will work for you? You wont know until you try it. Remember my fed DREAM? First 5 shows where filled with NPCs. Death Row? It started with 75% NPC characters. Following these steps exactly and you will see a difference. Why set yourself up for failure if you really aspire to open a fed for the long run? Put the work in, put the time, and most impotently deliver great stuff!
None of this will work if you churn out mediocre site content and results. The RPs are one thing, as most people only care about RPs when starting a fed to judge if they have a chance to be a star compared to everyone else. It’s good to have crappy RPs for them to look at. It gives them a sense of “I can beat ALL these people and be the champ!” thus motivating them.
Working hard to make sure the site is updated with fresh stuff and your shows are good, and on time, you will draw people. Go ahead and try it. I can’t wait to see some new feds pop up! If you try my method, please, let me know how it turns out for you!