Selling downloads of your film on your own part 4
So as of now I've heard back from E-Junkie, DPD, and FetchApp.... I just received an email response from Fetchapp... they said this about large file downloads..
That's a large file for anybody to download. Files of that size are best done over torrents (which make them shareable) or broken into smaller pieces.
Torrents do work great for large files but has anyone figured out how to sell films through them? Not as far as I have seen... Vodo is set up to distribute films via torrent but it just uses public torrents... I mean you could run your own private tracker for you film but doesn't seem viable to me and I've never seen any filmmakers selling access to torrent files.... and not everyone knows how to use torrents so it's not a super easy purchase for all... but it is something to explore... sell a download of a torrent file on a private tracker maybe? Any ideas?
When I asked Fetchapp about excessive bandwith usage which would happen if you sold a couple thousand 3-4gb downloads this is what they had to say...
We'd actually switch you to a metered plan where you pay a flat rate per GB of bandwidth. Our current rate is $0.25/GB
Their using Amazon S3 which costs $0.12/GB... so if their going to charge double what an individual could pay I asked if I could host the files myself using Amazon S3...
Yes we have a "Pro" plan that you can use with your own storage, it's a flat $25/month per month. Again, 4.5GB is a lot for most people to download, especially in rural areas or smaller countries.
So that is a viable option if you want to manage Amazon s3 yourself and pay the $0.12/GB....
What is your experience downloading large files in the 3gb - 4gb range? I've downloaded lots of files that big without a problem besides slow speeds sometimes... If you lost your connection during the download and had to start over or had super slow speeds like 20k/sec I could see how it would suck...
Since DPD seems like the best fit for me so far I'm trying out the 30 day trial right now... It seems pretty awesome so far as you have control over everything and can customize the entire buying experience... the guy from DPD even replied on this blog! ^_^ So thanks for that Jason!
Another thing to consider is which payment options to use? There's paypal...paypal pro...paypal plus... Stripe... I'm going to have to look into this... Since everything I'm going to sell will either be about $5 or $20 I should look into micropayment processing....
Slowly but surely getting everything into place to sell HSM and hopefully these posts will help you if you're looking to sell your film as well.
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