FilmBaby - DVD Sales

FilmBaby doesn't MAKE the DVDs for you. They expect you to make the DVDs. So we're at the $1.70 each mark with that, according to my page on Creating your Own DVDs. Then you ship them in bulk to FilmBaby and they make it easy for people to buy them. They charge you $4 flat fee per DVD as their cut. If you charge $10 for your DVD, that is 40% - which is less than Amazon charges you. However, if you charge $20 for your DVD, now that's only 20%. It means you can get by with a very small commission to them depending on how much you want to charge your visitors. If we go with our $12.99 fee that we've been doing things with, that would mean you get around $7 profit per sale, which is rather good.

There is also a one time $39.99 setup fee - but if you couple that in with their $25 UPC fee, that means for about $65 you now have a UPC code on your DVD. Since they are non-exclusive, this is MUCH cheaper than just about anywhere else that you can get a UPC from.

Selling the DVD

FilmBaby claims they have arrangements with NetFlix and all sorts of other organizations so that your DVD can be picked up by tons of stores and sell lots. You just keep sending new DVDs to their warehouse to suit the demand. The question is of course, how many stores really are going to buy your DVD just because it appears in the FilmBaby warehouse? Answer - not many. That is why film companies spend billions of dollars on advertising. It's the only reason people buy DVDs :) So you have to expect to do some marketing and advertising yourself, in order to create those sales.

In fact Netflix doesn't carry ANY DVDs at all on how to do origami - not mine, not anybody else's. I put in a request for them to carry some. No response yet ...

Summary of Sales

OK as expected, even though I'm selling 1-2 a month of my DVD on my personal website and 2-3 a week via Amazon, as of August 2008 I have only sold four DVDs **total** on FilmBaby since December 2007. Not that many people go randomly roaming to FilmBaby to say "OK I want to buy some DVD!" Instead they go to Amazon to search, or they search the web and find my personal site.

They still have a stock of 5 DVDs left, so at this rate they will be set until 2009 :)

Still, I got a UPC out of this. I did get 4 DVDs sold, so that is say $30 profit. So I got a cheaper-than-usual UPC (even including the setup fee) plus a bonus $30. That's a dinner out to celebrate having a UPC code. So I figure this was a good sign-up for that reason.

DVDs
Creating a DVD
Selling DVDs on your Own Website
CreateSpace - Amazon DVD Sales
FilmBaby - DVD Sales
My Steps for my Origami DVD Sales

Getting Your Book Published
Writing Tips and Online Books

Online Literary Magazines

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