Distrify and The D-Word announce strategic partnership

Peter, thanks for the info. Distrify handles the streaming and download of movie files only, is that correct? Sales and fulfillment of physical product are left up to the filmmaker. How are payments handled for these various sales, since you collect and distribute to filmmakers and affiliates?

Have there been customer service issues develop on streaming product, and if so, to whom does a customer go for a solution? Mini example- when I tried to sign up for email on Adventures of Power from the button you embedded above, I had problems. Could not 'continue.' Will try again later. Thanks.

Peter, I discovered that my registration to Distrify email list went through, even though it did not appear to on screen.

The Scotsman newspaper on Distrify.

I uploaded my film, but now I'm wondering if the 53 minutes version would be better for on-line viewing than the 72 minute one. Any thoughts on that? Given the choice, do on-line viewers prefer shorter ones? My film is purely entertainment, about a group of radical puppeteers in Chapel Hill that perform huge spectacles in a primitive amphitheater, using recycled materials.

The audience would be primarily the puppeteering community, and secondly the eco/alt-theater crowd, a demographic I just made up.

Well, my upload failed (probably my end), so now that I'm starting from scratch I'll await to hear your thoughts on my question before trying again.

Using AT&T extreme DSL from the USA I was averaging 15 to 20 hours to upload HD files – so it's a pain because any one thing can easily stop the upload and you have to start from scratch again. You have to stick with it though and it will work. Safari browser works on smaller files – Firefox was terrible and Chrome works on larger files but Chrome was unstable ... just my experience. I do not and will not ever use Explorer.

The uploads mainly depend on the stability and upload bandwidth of your own internet connection. I've never experienced any difficulty here.

In the meantime, Dogwoof (a large distributor for indie docs in the UK, very active in audience engagement) has made a great part of their library available for streaming or purchase via Distrify players on http://dogwoof.tv – worth having a look.

Peter – I'm wondering if you guys ever added a way to offer a free download or stream to distrify. I'm about to (or trying to, encoding is messing with me) join up with distrify, and one extremely useful thing would be to allow people to preview a film – like an academic considering purchase

It does.
I also just posted a feedback question on distrify; the only way to do so seems to be via some site called "get satisfaction", unless you have tweeter or facebook, etc.;

My upload appeared cropped, but it seems like there's no way to view one's own upload to see how it looks, is there?

Everything is cool now. Distrify gives prompt feedback. I'm now officially distrified. Send me some money! (I need to replace the trailer; it has a few extra frames at the start...)

Strong price points. Do they work for you?

I don't think i've sold a thing. To be honest, I didn't change them. They were the defaults!

Are you messing with me?

Well, the price for your download gets displayed as GBP 13.99 here (which would be USD 22.14) – and that for a 28-minute film that's almost 10 years old? I think that's too much. Might work for a new feature-length film but not for this, I'm afraid.

Also, what has been your strategy for promoting the film? Where is the player embedded? How many times has it been shared? What social media have you used to promote it?

Keep in mind that Distrify is a tool that enables you to deliver straight to your audience. It's not one of those distribution portals that will try and sell the film for you (or not).

Oh, it'll get embedded as soon as i update my website. but only there. i hear you about the price. i'll change it.

Well, the whole idea is to "sell movies socially" on the web. Being social involves some 'going out' on the web, my friend... :-)

Hey, all. I just finally took a look at Distrify since I have yet to upload a trailer of my film to my own site – although I only finished my trailer a couple months ago.

One issue I see is that customers need to sign up with Distrify or use their FB login in order to buy. That's why I chose Paypal over Google or Amazon checkout on my site when I sell DVDs: Customers don't have to be Paypal members if they don't want to. It's my guess that a number of people would rather not go through with the transaction rather than have to go through this hassle and risk spam, ID theft, etc. And offering FB login helps, but not if they aren't FB members – which I assume is the case for many of my customers.

A second issue is the inability to configure sales tax. I'd be using this for DVD sales, and this means that while anyone in my home state (CA) who buys from my site would pay tax, if they buy from the widget, they wouldn't (technically, the tax would be included). This is another reason why I had decided to go with Paypal over the other checkout options. They allow you to configure sales tax by zipcode range, rather than just state.

(I should add that if you sell products on Amazon via their Sell On Amazon service, i.e. Amazon Marketplace, they also expect you to include sales tax in your sales price. Of course, that's easier said than done, since only some of your customers will be paying tax, and of those, there may be different rates depending on their location!)

I didn't notice that your offer Paypal as a purchase option. Could it be that the examples I looked at were by non-US filmmakers?

Your solution of automatically signing people up without them formally going through the process sounds like a good one. Is this the same if someone is buying a physical item?

Certainly, implementing tax and VAT for every customer is going to be a challenge. But, I think if you make it customizable enough for each filmmaker, then it can be done right. For US based sellers, following the way it's done in Paypal, where you can configure both a state and zipcode range, will prob cover the bases (although determining the exact zipcode range you need can be a challenge, as I learned here in LA). For sellers from other countries, you'd need to see how comparable services handle those details, but I'd guess it would be a matter of determining similar factors: country, state/territory, city, postal code. Obviously, it would be great if the software automatically figured all this out. But realistically, if you let each client configure the rules the way they need to be, that could be good enough... (although it might be nice to have some recommendations for major areas.)

The thing I'm unclear on is the digital end. Is tax ever charged for streaming & downloading? I took a look at Journeyman Pictures, after Nigel mentioned it, and I noticed that they charge VAT in Euros (and the one download I looked at cost even more than a typical DVD!).

I see what you're saying when I try to buy a DVD. However, I could swear that the first time, when I chose "streaming rental", it asked me for my name and city in addition to my email, and only then did it present me with payment options. Does that make sense?

Otherwise, I'm impressed with how much thought has been put into this. I'm considering embedding a YouTube trailer on my frontpage, but then having a link to embed the film, and using Distrify code for that. And of course, I'd use the Distrify version one on other sites.

Could you clarify how money transfers to the filmmaker typically works? Somewhere it indicated that there might be fees involved. Is that always the case with Paypal or bank accounts?

Another question: Where in the app do you link to the filmmaker's site? I don't see it in your example, but I think I saw it in some others.