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Video on Demand…. how to?
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Thanks Ned… I appreciate you checking with your friend.
The Scotland trip is over, and by the way the slider sailed through customs both ways without even a second look. Much thanks to fellow COW Tom Sefton for arranging all the other gear rental and crew there.
As for VOD…
I was woefully uneducated about the process when I first asked… I have since done a fair bit of research and self-education about it.
As it turns out, outfits that offer VOD services are fairly plentiful, almost too many to choose from, in fact… and they run the gamut from cheap to expensive, really easy to implement to not-quite-as-easy. Some offer payment gateways to easily take credit cards from viewers, some don’t. Some offer fairly robust DRM, some don’t. Most have options that allow you to control viewers, customers who only want to pay to watch one video, or a subscription that allows you to watch everything… either for a set period of time, or in perpetuity.
I think we have found two or three different vendors that do all of what we need at reasonable cost.
Despite your friend’s suggestion, I’m pretty sure we definitely don’t want to go the DVD route. The idea is to get people on the hook for continuing subscriptions, as it will take a while for us to roll out content. Creating a new lesson once every week or two is doable… creating a couple of years’ worth all at one whack to release on DVDs would be daunting, and take us a long time to get started. Some of the companies offer very robust DRM, but even then some degree of piracy is the part of the price of admission, I think. I guess you just have to hope that it isn’t an unpleasantly high percentage.
I think your wife might be an anomaly with her voluminous how-to DVD purchases. Do people on the consumer level even use DVDs anymore? I’d be interested in hearing opinions on that. Instructional material like this seems, at least to me, to lend itself much more to a streaming audience. I know personally I have three, maybe four, DVD and Blu-ray players at home and I can’t even recall the last time any of them even had a disc in them (at best, they are used as Netflix portals). On the other, I watch how-tos online all the time (I most recently learned how to replace the agitator dogs on my washing machine… a part that I didn’t even know existed but watched a video about thanks to a guy who was amazingly dexterous enough to do with one hand while recording on his phone with the other). I definitely could be wrong about that, though, DVDs might live.
Appreciate you asking….
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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I asked my wife why she decides to buy a DVD rather than just stream and she said that when she has the DVD she is not beholden to the recurring monthly fees, so I think knowing the demographics’s buying behavior is key. Also, she has a collector’s mentality to wanting to “own” a nice looking DVD, like a book. Maybe it’s generational? With something like her knitting and weaving, where you have to see tiny detail, perhaps the DVD on a large TV screen gives her better detail? Oh, she’s a pack rat so that plays into owning.
I tried to get rich quick (didn’t work out as you see) producing and selling what was in the 80’s & 90’s called Special Interest videos. In fact, Blockbuster had a section by that name. I used to belong to SIVA. The titles usually started out with the two words, “How To. Mainly with an expert to host for ego and a slice. Sometimes I had partners, other times I went solo. I learned a lot and the most important the take away:
PEOPLE WILL NOT SPEND FOR SOMETHING THEY CAN GET FOR FREE.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Here Terry is an example of one, my wife got an email to join this morning. Lots of videos:
https://www.craftdaily.com/?utm_source=linkconnector&utm_medium=affiliate
“A division of F+W A Content + eCommerce Company”…Looks like a big, deep pockets company. Betcha they have an in-house video studio:
https://www.fwcommunity.com/our-executive-committee
The COO was the head kahuna at a big biz trade press company.
Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com -
Vimeo offers a pay per play model that is pretty low cost of entry. Might check into that too.
Rich Rubasch
Tilt Media Inc.
Video Production, Post, Studio Sound Stage
Founder/President/Editor/Designer/Animator
https://www.tiltmedia.com -
They do indeed, Rich… that was actually one of the first ones I looked it.
It looks pretty good, my only real bone of contention with them is that they are “revenue split” only… I’d personally prefer a provider that I can just pay a (reasonable) monthly fee to and not split revenues. At least they have one of the lower splits, although I do find their little infographic to be wildly and somewhat amusingly visually misleading….
Their split is actually 90/10, although the graphic at least visually gives the impression of a fair bit less. Some of the places are 70/30 though, and I think I saw one that was even higher.
T2
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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com
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