Following the whole VOD development in blading, it becomes obvious that most video makers are using the online market platform Sellfy for making their final product available to the masses.
You will find almost all blading VOD’s on their site and some of our most influential videographers seem to like working with them. Be-Mag teamed up with Sellfy to explain how you can make the most out of it and give you an overview of what videos can be found on the platform already. Doesn’t matter if you like to make a little bit of money with your own video, or if you just want to download your favorites, this one should be interesting to you. We spoke to Sellfy’s Nauris Dauksta and he came up with a pretty interesting article about how to Sellfy.
Text: Nauris Dauksta
If you’re reading this now, chances are you love riding with friends. The only thing about
shredding you don’t like – it doesn’t pay all bills. Or does it?
There are three ways to make money shredding known to riders:
– scoring a major sponsor;
– ripping at competitions and scoring checks;
– selling your videos.
Most of you’ve heard the realities of signing with a sponsor. It’s not like you’ll be able to quit your day job or something.. It all depends on your skill, events your take part in, your previous performance and whether you can sale merch or make edits for your sponsors. Usually, you’ll simply get a small discount on gear.
Only the riders who show that they can really move the needle in product sales will see deals for free product, cash for doing well at major events or actual salaries. Usually it’s a combination of blazing tricks and exceptional PR skills that takes a rider to this shredding paradise.
As seen in the Vibralux Chris Haffey Profile
Ripping at competitions is another option for making hard cash for your cold beers. Though to really quit your day job, you’ll have to qualify for every competition out there, #win, get in Top5 and score prize pool till cows come home. Like most of us, you’ll quickly realize that this is no golf and you can’t make a living simply by competing, even if you’re good.
As always, there’s a third way to approach this. Selling your video shredits (a term I just came up with) online. Your fellow riders Jamie Olmstead from FootageTape, Chris Haffey & Alex Broskow from VibraluxDenim & many other teams like 9TO5DigiMedia & blackfabric are already cashing solid checks by selling short video edits online through Sellfy.
I talked with Adam Johnson from VibraluxDenim about his experience with making video edits, here’s what he had to say:
“It took four months of filming and editing. The main challenge is always finding spots to skate. It’s illegal to skate most of the places we go to, so you have to plan out missions to get things accomplished. There is always the danger of running into police, security guards, and regular citizens acting as heroes. Chris Haffey was also on a time restraint since he skates for Nitro Circus and only has so many opportunities to skate.”
Jamie Olmstead, who recently released FootageTape Episode 4 with his team, agrees…
“There are always challenges in filmmaking, especially when you are doing something that is essentially cinemaverite.
A lot of the outcome is not dependent on the filmmaker, but rather the people in front of the camera.”
Getting the film right as you want it takes a lot of planning, the same applies to when you’re promoting your videos. We can’t help you with filming, but what we can do is help you with marketing your shredits. Not only can we expose your videos to more fans on Sellfy Market, we can offer you a free video promotion framework that the most successful of our video sellers use.
We came up with this framework of 17 steps that you can use to promote your videos after interviewing dozens of the most successful video sellers on Sellfy. Here are six steps from this framework, for you to use when promoting your next film:
1) Release a series of 1520 seconds teases on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Side note: it’s not that important to hang out in all the social networks, focus on 2-3 where you see the most traction.
2) Debut the product early to certain industry professionals and tastemakers to get their initial reactions. Turn their reaction to your film into shareable quote photos.
3) Use MailChimp (or any similar email service) together with Sellfy mailer to let your fans know about the release. Ideally, you might want to email them a long sales email one day before the release, so your fans are hyped up and already decide whether they’re going to buy from you or not. The day of the release you can simply email them the link to buy the film.
4) Use call to actions within all your videos to encourage people to like, rate, comment and share your videos. Use Sellfy Social discounts to encourage your customers to share online.
5) Upload your teasers on Wistia. Use Wistia’s turnstile feature to pause your video in the middle and ask viewers to provide their email address to view the rest of it. Promise to send them something on that address, so they won’t enter some rubbish just to watch the video.
6) Start a “making of” series in a blog format. Start a blog and collect emails on your blog and let the readers know when your videos will become available for sale.
We’ve set up special page for you guys at Be-Mag to check out the video promotion framework in full. (Access here)
P.S. Seriously though, why are you still not selling your videos with Sellfy (sellfy.com/sellvideo)? Let me know in the comments sections below.
Author: Nauris
More examples of what to find on Sellfy:
As seen in Hatian: The Lost Tapes
Photo: Vibralux / As seen in the Vibralux John Bolino Profile
Find a full list here: sellfy.com/market/video
This post has been created in cooperation with Sellfy
