Right so, continuing my brief survey of the online distribution methods that Chris and I use to make money from our short films, next up is the Dynamo Player.

Dynamo offer a simple embeddable “player” which is, to all intents and purposes, the same as the YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion or countless other streaming video players that now litter the internet. The BIG difference is that Dynamo charges the viewer – enabling the creator to earn money from their content.

For instance if you have $0.99 (currently 64p for those of you in Britain) you can watch my brilliant film “Death Of The Revolution”

There are two ways of paying, either via PayPal on a one off pay-per-view basis or by setting up a Dynamo account that gives you immediate access to all their hosted content. The player is embeddable anywhere in the web so you can put this device where ever you think most people are going to see it. Also you get to set the fee that people pay so your marketing strategy isn’t tied down by what Dynamo think is the going rate.

As creator or “publisher” of the content you are paid by every viewer. There are no minimums, no contracts, no up-front fees, and no need to keep advertisers happy. Viewer payments are immediately available in your Dynamo account, and you can collect your money at any time. Dynamo covers all the hosting, bandwidth, technology, and support costs from our share of the sale, so you have nothing more to worry about.

Best of all is the split. MiShorts, as much as I love ‘em give the creators 25% of the revenue. Dynamo give you 70%.

Both companies are also very responsive to feedback from the content creators. Dynamo is a brand new service and they are eager to make their service suit the needs of the likes of you and I. When we first put our films with them there were a bunch of things about the player that didn’t work for us – these all disappeared after a single email. A very impressive response.

I like the community aspect of MiShorts, the curation and the care – those guys really love short films. But as far as something that suits my needs as filmmaker – so far nothing beats the Dynamo. At last a simple and effective way I can show people my work online without giving it away for free.