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Where are the best places to sell / lease out films online?

10 years ago - Vasco de Sousa

I have two movies on Vimeo on Demand, and we've had customers who tell us they like the movies.

However, as one of my customers pointed out, there are some issues with purchasing from Vimeo. If you have a video that's only available for rent, it says "purchase from", implying that the video can be downloaded. Also, if you have it available for rent and purchase, the "purchase from" price is the rent. Both of those are pretty annoying.

Another annoying thing about Vimeo is that for non-filmmakers, it can be confusing to buy from. I had a customer asking me to walk through the process to find the video he rented, confused by all the tools that for video uploaders, and not video watchers.

I understand there are options like Google Play, and iTunes too. Does anyone know a guide to using them from a seller's perspective? What about European companies, for customers who speak languages other than English?

Or, is there a way of getting rid of the annoyingly misleading "purchase from" wording on Vimeo? I think I may be losing some of my audience because of it.

My two films are a documentary on Ukraine http://ukrainedocumentary.com and a micro-budget romantic comedy http://darasays.com . I'm also looking for distribution options for future movies. Perhaps they are too low budget for some distribution platforms, but surely there must be something I'm overlooking.

Do you sell films online? If so, how do you do it? Thanks.

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10 years ago - Vasco de Sousa

Thanks James. I think they fixed it since I last checked.

As far as pricing, that depends on the length of the film, the age of the film, and the audience.

For a new or newish feature length indie film, the going rate on amazon is $6.99 for a forty eight hour rental. (I don't see a lot of indie new releases on the UK site, which is why I give the dollar amount.)

Then there's the fact that Vimeo takes a "modest" transaction fee, before taking their ten percent. I'm not sure what that transaction fee is, but with currency conversions and the rest of it, there's a point where it's no longer worth selling the film.

Another problem I had with Vimeo, which I'll have to check if it changed, was that if I had different prices for different regions, it would show the lowest price, even if it's in a different region. Which would pose the same problem of users being charged more than expected.

To avoid that, I have one price for all regions. (This is annoying when exchange rates move around, but at least it's not as annoying as misleading pricing.)

I have a trailer on a couple of other websites. But, I don't know how to link from a trailer.

I should say some good things about Vimeo too. Vimeo have connectivity with Dropbox, as well as FTP upload which can be paused (both make things much easier when you have large files like HD feature films.) This beats both Youtube and DailyMotion, both sites you need to restart an upload if it's interrupted.

So, I guess I'm sticking with Vimeo as my primary distribution channel for now, but considering other avenues for those members of the audience which don't get Vimeo.

Response from 10 years ago - Vasco de Sousa SHOW

10 years ago - William Allum

Hi Vasco,

Just wanted to ask but how do you find Vimeo? I have several shorts I wouldn't mind putting up and seeing if I can make back some of the money I spent on them, and test the waters for future features, but the initial cost of vimeo pro puts me off a little, at least at the moment. Do you make a reasonable return from it?

As far as places like Itunes and Netflix, they are quite hard to submit to, you can't really do it as an individual. iTunes has specific companies it accepts from, and has very specific formats and meta data requirements, nothing straight forward. They also don't accept films individually, most of the companies that submit content to them do it in bulk, 100, 200 films at a time. So it would be best to try and find a company that offers this service, but I would be careful as they probably cost quite a bit or take quite a heavy return.
Amazon might be easier, they look as if they might accept content from individuals, they offer a DVD printing service, each one only made one someone orders, but I have never tried this.

Hope that helps.

Bill

Response from 10 years ago - William Allum SHOW

10 years ago - Vasco de Sousa

Hi William,

On Vimeo Pro, they don't promote your film for you. So, you still do all the legwork, all the selling.

I got Vimeo Pro because my feature films are more than 10gb in size. I used it at first to submit to festivals. As I had a film up there anyway, and I'd already paid for Vimeo Pro, I decided to try selling it.

But yeah, I could have just printed out 100 or so DVDs for the same amount of money, and sold physical copies. Or, I could probably set up my own video sales website.

It's a lot of work, and unlike eBay you're not likely to get in search engine results just from keywords. You need to direct your customers to Vimeo.

As for CreateSpace (Amazon's print on demand service), they keep a lot of the money. And I mean a lot, read the terms of service carefully, they find all kinds of ways to charge you. And they charge for a proof. I'm still waiting for that proof to arrive by snail mail. It's a slow process.

I'm still considering something like iTunes. I should soon have at least three features to submit at once.

Hope that helps,

Vasco

Response from 10 years ago - Vasco de Sousa SHOW

Response from 10 years ago - Jason Wilcox SHOW