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Secrets to Opening a New Fed, and Succeeding

BenHalkum

Reverend Asshole
Joined
Jan 16, 2006
Messages
516
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Age
40
Website
www.wrestleuta.com
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!
 

Sc00t

New member
Joined
Oct 8, 2004
Messages
161
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Age
37
Location
Wigan, Near Manchester, England
Website
www.ewmania.com
SUCCESS!

Remember my fed DREAM?

I do. I also remember Ford, Tomer, Dozer, Big Shot and others running it way before you.

Death Row?
Yeah, erm, same kinda thinkg.

Put the work in, put the time, and most impotently deliver great stuff!
I won't point out that you called all of your readers "impotent", that would be lame.

I will, however, just rephrase what you said and insert some truth.

"Put some work into stealing someone elses original brand, put in the time to remind people of the legacy someone else put in place, and then delivery a consistently average product which falls short of the great legacy you trample all over before eventually (after several hiatuses) shut the place."
 

BenHalkum

Reverend Asshole
Joined
Jan 16, 2006
Messages
516
Points
0
Age
40
Website
www.wrestleuta.com
I used this when i ran the UTA, my original fed, and it went for years. Death Row, still going, and while I had it this worked perfectly up until I handed the fed off. As for DREAM, I had permission to run it and even had Big Shot helping for a short period.

Look, for some reason you always seem to have some sort of witty reply to anything I do. Unsure what I ever did to shit on your parade, but for whatever it is I'm sorry. I do find it suspicious you decide to reply to this here and not on EWZine where you are staff and where I posted it first. I guess you don't shit in your own back yard?

Did I ever say this would work for everyone? No. Did I ever say it wasn't flawed? Nope.

What i did was deliver an original piece of work to the community that may help at least one person some place. If it doesn't? That's fine. I'm going to continue to keep doing what I do no matter what is said. All i can ask is if you don't have a bit of constructive criticism, then just skip replying. The only person you make look bad is yourself, showing that instead of being able to true feedback, you only want to secure your place in some sort of way as a douche bag.

I've been in the same place you are, and trying to grow away from that. isn't it time you do to?

Anyone have any CONSTRUCTIVE feedback, either positive or negative, all is accepted. I do want to thank you for pointing out the spelling error Scott, even if done in the highest point of shit stained ways.

;)
 

Deacon

Member
Joined
Apr 1, 1998
Messages
309
Points
18
Age
49
Location
Urbana, OH
I'm trying to remember how I started my only fed - MWC (Erik Zieba published the old shows somewhere on here as well as what it became when I handed it off to EZ). From my memory, I had a plan - the "system" that took your RPs and gave you advantages if you did better at the RPs according to the judges. I had a pre-fed, which was a way to work out the bugs w/ real live people (mostly). I did use some NPCs, but not a LOT of them. I pulled from the CSWA and the CotG group I'd already had contact with to form that test group and then I built a storyline out of that test group.

The fed got to running pretty good, but it ended up being a LOT of work for me. I wrote almost all the shows, including a good deal of the segments.

So, I think I did a good deal of what you suggested, and I think the fed was moderately successful for our circle, even expanded that circle to guys who hadn't been part of the CSWA - does anyone else remember Lance Bishop? Or what about the hated (yet hilarious - to me) Extreme Express Express (aka E-cubed)?

Most of all, I had fun & I was able to give some people a chance to do what they wanted to do, and even if they lost, I don't think many of them felt the experience was bad, and actually was enjoyable.

As for criticism of your blog, I would say most of it is inarguable. Hard work generally does equal success. Preparation is almost always a must. Heck, if you work hard, you can probably even be a douchebag and get people to join up, especially if you can tell a bang up story or have a slick website (we've seen plenty of that in the history of this game).

Let me give you your next blog topic - How do you RUN a successful efed? How do you make people want to put the work in? How do you MAKE the game fun?
 

Sc00t

New member
Joined
Oct 8, 2004
Messages
161
Points
0
Age
37
Location
Wigan, Near Manchester, England
Website
www.ewmania.com
I saw this thread here first is the honest truth.

The remainder I won't rise to, just because I can see that people may find value in the content, regardless of the track record of the person writing it.

-sc00t
 

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