Kent Nichols is the creator of Ask a Ninja, a web series produced independently by a crew of three that has become so popular that you can buy a DVD of its first 30 episodes at Urban Outfitters. Nichols is not in the WGA or any other guild, so he’ll be able to continue to work regardless of what happens with a strike. He’s written an interesting post about this at Metroblogging Los Angeles:

The current studio system is based on work for hire — which is fine since it gives predictable income in exchange for ownership of your work. But you end up losing out if you create a hit. Talk to Mike Judge about Beavis and Butthead.

I’ve successfully crafted a show that lives in it’s own channel that I create with a small team (my writing/producing partner and a freelance editor) that is not only popular on the net, but is also financially successful.

I did this by applying principles of Indie Film financing and creating a show that was easy and fun to produce with only two people.

Sure, my site AskANinja.com, doesn’t pull in the sweet dough of Pirates of the Caribbean, but I’ll probably make as much cash over its lifetime as the writers and director on that film did.

There’s no doubt that Nichols is Living the Dream (although, it’s in all likelihood a dream that most content producers didn’t know until about a year ago that they could even have). But his show is also absolutely at the top of the heap in terms of web popularity, which means he has the privilege to make what other people are struggling to accomplish sound super easy.

I found out about his post through a Twitter missive from Chuck Olson, who has been producing video for and about the web for as long as anybody. A couple of years ago, he made a documentary about blogging called Blogumentary, which you can watch on Google Video, and he’s also worked on Rocketboom and currently has a weekly show called Minnesota Stories. Here’s Olsen’s Twitter comment:

I think that probably speaks for a lot of people creating stuff specifically for the web. The community, the freedom of expression, and the no-boss factor is all really great, but if you have all that and you still can’t reliably pay the bills, tapping into the studio system–however broken it might be–doesn’t sound so bad.