CreateSpace /IndieFlix

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Challenge Films

Looking for comments, suggestions, testimonials, etc. of filmmakers who have used the online services such as Amazon's CreateSpace, where you put your movie up on another company's site, and they handle the promotion, packaging, delivery and fee collection. You can post here or email me directly at ChallengeFilms~ aol.com. Please indicate the genre of your film and if you had any 'known actors' in them.
 
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There is no marketing other than the Amazon site itself, so you would need to send potential buyers to the Amazon page. (example) http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-World-Stopped/dp/B004ISM3FA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327619914&sr=8-3

To make more profit, you can sell off of the "private" CreateSpace page that Amazon gives you.
Here's the private page compared to the (above) Amazon page: https://www.createspace.com/298476

The profit on the Amazon site is $2.18 , and $6.40 on the CreateSpace site. Both orders
are printed/shipped by Amazon.

http://etheridgeproductions.scriptmania.com
 
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@Rayandmigdalia. Congrats on the number of films. I mean it and am not trying to be cute. But I'm curious, you making a living off your dozen films on Amazon yet? What are the returns like?

2.18 on 12.98 isn't that bad. It's more than 16%. It's pretty good if you have a lot of sales.
 
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Rayandmigdalia said:
People get really upset when I "tell the truth" about our revenues. From all of the films
that you see, we average LESS than $20 per month (not PER FILM...for the whole group).
As of today, for example, our monthly earning is $6.38 total.

http://etheridgeproductions.scriptmania.com
Click to expand...

I think you're misunderstanding people here. People don't get upset when you tell the truth about your revenues. What upsets people is when you say those are the only revenues possible for anyone. An absolute truth, rather than personal experience.

You've mentioned before that you see yourself as a hobbyist. Which is cool, absolutely nothing wrong with that. You have fun, and make movies!

Now, IF you wanted to make more than that (not saying you do), there are questions that you could ask about how to do it. You've sold 3 films this month? You could sell more. It's all on the marketing and promotion side of things. Of course, not everyone makes it, but I do think most people could do better than they currently do if they work on that.
 
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Internet self-distribution is and should be one's LAST resort. Of course you're not going to make a lot of money doing it yourself on the internet trying to sell 1-5 copies here and there on Amazon or Indieflix or whatever it is. For a hobbyist, these places are great because it gives an outlet for your film to at least get some copies sold. For the more serious filmmaker, Amazon and co. is not going to cut it.
 
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We sell on Amazon because there's no other way for us to sell them. (Amazon also offers them in VOD format by the way). We also (try) to sell on ebay and through our own website, (click here) with about the same results as Amazon. We sold the last set of "7 Movies for Midnight" in August. Don't let our term "hobbiest" throw you. We have been trying to (seriously) distribute our films for years. We've contacted every home video/DVD distributer that we know of. Without "name actors" they don't even want to see screeners. We sell on Amazon because we have to, not because we want to.

If you have some other way to sell the films, please share it with us.

We don't want to spend $600 getting our films on itunes when that is essentially what Amazon is doing for us for free. Our last VOD download (For $1.99) was in September.

We also have our films listed with mDistribute.com , without any takers.

Anybody?

Thanks.

http://etheridgeproductions.scriptmania.com
 
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DeJager said:
Internet self-distribution is and should be one's LAST resort.
Click to expand...

I've heard nothing but nightmare stories about dealing with distributors, so I'm leaning the other direction - plan for internet self-distribution and only go the traditional route if someone comes along with a significantly better deal. Of course it'll be a lot more work, but the payoff is that you have much more control over what happens with the film.

Rayandmigdalia said:
We sell on Amazon because there's no other way for us to sell them
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I think this is what most filmmakers don't understand about internet self-distribution - it's not about how you deliver your film. Amazon is as good as any other place - you might make a few dollars more here or there with one of their competitors, if that's the case go with them instead - but the place you sell it doesn't really matter. These companies all basically offer order & payment processing and product fulfillment - but that's not enough.

You need three major things to make money - a great film, distribution, and marketing.

The great film part is very hard. Everyone here is struggling to make the best films they possibly can. For a lot of people the challenge is that the best film they can make may not be good enough to convince anyone to buy it no matter what else they do. To make things worse we can't objectively judge the quality of our own films - if we didn't think they were good we wouldn't have made them in the first place. But even if you do manage to make an amazing film the work has only just begun.

Distribution is simply the means of getting your finished film to a customer in exchange for money. This used to be difficult to do yourself - extremely expensive and time consuming. You had to produce and store inventory ahead of time, process incoming orders, manage payment processing, handle order fulfillment, etc. Now it's often as simple as signing up for an account with amazon and uploading your master files. This is actually probably the easiest part of the whole process now.

That leaves us with the third piece of the puzzle - marketing. It doesn't matter if your film is great if no one is looking for it. It doesn't matter if your film is on Amazon if no one is looking for it. You have to find the people who would be interested in a film like yours, you have to make them aware of your film, and you have to convince them it's worth spending money on. All three of those are areas that some people build entire careers around - and if you are going to self-distribute you're going to have to get good at all three. With tools like social media & online advertising it's certainly doable now - but it's never going to be easy.

Rayandmigdalia said:
Don't let our term "hobbiest" throw you. We have been trying to (seriously) distribute our films for years. (...) If you have some other way to sell the films, please share it with us.
Click to expand...

Ray - you've posted in several threads lately about how little success you've had making money off your films, but I haven't seen anything where you discuss what your marketing approach has been. Being on Amazon and Createspace doesn't count - that's distribution. Having a website doesn't count - it's important to have one, and it should be SEO optimized, but just like the film itself a website is worthless if people don't know to look for it. You can't rely on search engines driving random traffic your way, and even when they do it's likely to translate to few sales.

Have you done any market research for any of your films? i.e. identifying who would be most interested in the subject/genre and then finding online communities where you can reach those people. Are you running ad campaigns on google, youtube, facebook, etc? In magazines? Have you done direct social media marketing on facebook, twitter, etc? Found blogs that promote similar films to yours and contacted them directly about reviews? Or directly placing ads on forums you've identified in the market research as places where your potential audience spends time? Or joining those forums, participating in their communities, and then promoting your film that way? And no, indietalk doesn't count - if you're primary market is other people trying to make and sell their own films you're not likely to have much success. In general though - what has your approach been on the marketing side?
 
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We make what could be described as "thrillers", "adventures", and "mysteries". Unlike documentaries, you cannot target specific groups of people. (for example, I could sell DVDs in motorcycle shops if I did a doc about traveling the U.S. by motorcycle). We just have plain old no-budget feature films...no-name actors... with ordinary stories.

We've had our films reviewed by several reviewers, the local newspapers have done numerous articles on our activities, we have spent a small fortune on sending our films to film festivals, and the actors who have appeared in our films all have their facebook pages, etc. We also have dozens of clips and trailers on youtube and vimeo.
 
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Rayandmigdalia said:
We make what could be described as "thrillers", "adventures", and "mysteries". Unlike documentaries, you cannot target specific groups of people.
Click to expand...

Sure you can. Those are common and well established genres. Even at the most basic levels I'm sure you could find communities of people who are dedicated fans of thrillers, adventures, and/or mysteries. With a little creativity you could probably also find many more communities of people who are fans of particular films in those genres who might also take an interest in your films, if they knew they existed. Which they don't, because you haven't told them. Because you apparently think they don't exist.

We just have plain old no-budget feature films...no-name actors... with ordinary stories.
Click to expand...

So here's the real question - why would you make a plain old ordinary film in the first place, and why would you expect anyone to be interested in it if you did? There's many more films out there than anybody has the time to watch, so why would they choose to waste their limited movie-watching time on a plain old ordinary fim when they could choose one that's extraordinary, or different, or intriguing, or exciting, etc? Before you can convince anyone to give you their money for your film you need to convince them to give you their time, which is potentially more valuable because there's a finite limit on it. You need to figure out what it is that makes your film stand out from the rest and then figure out a way to tell the right people.
 
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