Fansites of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and their advertising habits
In this chapter several Buffy will be examined more thorough, especially on the parts of their advertising habits and on their production and distribution activities and capacities.
http://www.saifai.co.uk/bfanfic.shtml
This website is hosted by Rhonda Cluff. If you just take a glance at this site you can immediately witness the huge amount of fan fiction and the work that has been delivered. There‘s fan fiction about Buffy meeting Ghostbusters, Buffy meeting Xena the warrior princess. Without the facilities of the internet, fans wouldn’t be able to spread their fan fiction, they could still write but they couldn’t share it that easily. On the site there are also some musicvideos, merchandise, multimedia (like icons for instance), postergallery, adoptions (you can actually adopt your own Buffybabe at a website), an episode guide and a message forum. You can also register on this websites, so you feel really part of a community, that is the Buffy community. With this subscription you’ll be sure that you’re not missing out on anything because they’ll keep you posted with a magazine. You’ll also get some gifts from Buffy for free and you ill get a 10% discount on other VIP collectibles. So far a global journey through this website.
On the part of the advertisements, you can find a link to the Buffy store. Here you can purchase DVD’s, goodies, funstuff etc, just to keep the site running (the site also gives the opportunity to make a donation). Besides the store commodities there’s also a link to Amazon and Ebay, where you can buy almost anything that has to do with Buffy.
http://www.slayersource.homestead.com/home.html
This website is hosted by eclectic girl. It’s more clear than the previous site. In principal it has the same features as the other site. Only this site seems to be less profitable. This site however included an interactive-section where there is the possibility to play games, take quizzes which will tell you which character will suite you the most. These are all tools that will help to stimulate the sense of a community. As far as the advertising goes, there isn’t really anything to find on the site. There are only free assets available like wallpapers, images, fan art and off course the selfmade musicvideos. The webring are fully exploited on this site but they’re all for free. This is a fan site that’s merely intended for the creating of a community than for moneymaking purposes.
http://angel-btvs.co.uk/
This website is a sort of combined one between the TV-show Angel (which is a spin-off of Buffy) and Buffy. At the first glance it is very obvious that this site is very profoundly undertaken. Anything there is to know about the TV-show is written down here. The site doesn’t have music videos, there ‘s only concrete information, like the biographies of all the cast-member, the places where buffy is filmed, an episode-guide, etc. The most interesting part is the fact that this site offers Buffyclothing, it shows al the available clothing, like t-shirts, caps, thongs (!) etc. The garment pieces all have a link to the site http://www.emerchandise.com/browse/BUFFYTHEVAMP/CAP/s.MDAaQ0Xn which is the largest TV and Movie Studio Store. The person who made this site will probably get some sort of compensation in return but most it’s probably a lot cheaper for emerchandise to sell their products by clicking on a link on a fan site then putting some general banner of their products on several websites. This probably isn’t the site of just one fan but probably from someone who’s a professional webbuilder.
http://www.buffyuk.buffyfans.co.uk
This site is a good example of the free labor some fans do. The site is from someone called Gareth and like he points out himself, Fox maybe thankful that he made such a wonderful site and spared Fox the hassle of doing it. Furthermore you can find almost anything you can also find and do on the other sites but this particular fan is really linking for free to the site of amazon.com, where you can buy DVD’s etc.
There are a lot of Buffy fansites, it would be impossible to look at all of them. Most of them are more or less the same. They can tell you everything about the TV-show about the characters, about the content, about the producers, you can play games, adopt your own buffydoll etc. The point is that the fans also made a lot of their own musicvideos. The thing that is most interesting is the fact that those fans are actually doing free labor. First of all, bringing the attention to the TV-show, and second of all with the free references and linking of merchandise to websites like ebay, amazon, emerchandise. Even when there is some sort of arrangement. For instance, the Lycos site and the Tripodsites. You can make your own fansite, for free if you use the URL of Tripod or Lycos, in exchange they want to put banners on your site. Where is the boundary between leisure time and labor time? Surfing on the internet is considered free time spend on a recreational and entertaining base. Building your own fansite, promoting a TV-show and making free references to commercial websites is in my opinion not leisure time but labor time. Second of all, with the rewriting of the scripts and the making of their own little musicvideos, they are making some sort of own commodity. This is in my point of view the blurring of the boundaries between producer and consumer.