To Prime or not Prime? That is Today's Question

The question of whether "To Prime or not to Prime?" gets a bit muddled when Amazon now refers to all of their streaming as "Prime" instead of just the stuff you get included with your paid "Prime" subscription.  To those who thought this would be a project blog about whether or not to use primer before painting something, I apologize.  That would have been: "To prime or not prime?" and the answer is usually, "prime" whenever you can.  You'll enjoy a better end product with a longer lasting top coat.

On to the streaming video question! 

Why not just give it all away when you'll be paid anyway?

This was my initial approach to Amazon Prime when Amazon Video Direct initially gave me the power to include my movies as part of their "Prime" service.  It was actually something I had emailed them about several times about over the years, because it was obvious that people would be more interested in giving an unknown film a chance if it wasn't going to cost them anything "extra".  This is actually the excuse a lot of people use when you find out they've seen a pirated version of your film.  The conversation goes something like this:

PIRATE: I saw your movie the other night!

ME: Really? Where did you watch it?  Did  you buy the DVD or did see the HD version on Amazon? Or did you watch it on  my site?

PIRATE: Oh, I use this site where all the movies are free.  No commercials or anything.  It's great! They have every movie there!

ME: (Not trying at all to hide my disgust) So, a pirate site?  You stole my movie.

PIRATE: Well, I hate commercials and I don't like to pay for indie movies in case they suck, ya know?

ME: Oh, so if you liked the movie you'd be handing me money right now?

Pirate either skulks away at this point or tries to save face, but the fact is, people will watch media for free whenever possible, so if you can offer it for "FREE" and get paid for it at the same time, it's a good to way to build an audience for an otherwise obscure film.

And for nearly two  years it worked like a charm.  Most of my titles were older and Amazon Prime's low rate of 15 cents per hour still netted a fair amount of money for movies that had been pushed to the backs of people's minds for quite awhile.  Just being able to post: "Now available with Prime" for each new title I got approved was a marketing tactic that in the beginning which yielded a ton of traffic (by my standards, anyway).

My new title at the time, "Lumber vs Jack", had respectable and steady numbers for about 20 months and only recently started to wane. Recently, the numbers in views and revenue reached the point where Prime isn't currently worth it for "Lumber vs Jack".

So, what happened?

Two things have changed.  One change is very recent and the other has been coming for awhile.

One of the main obstacles for indies making the jump to Prime was the fact that Amazon Prime is seen as a "broadcaster" and thus requires closed captioning in order to be legally (and ethically) compliant. For many very small producers, such as myself, spending $3 per running minute of captioning meant investing $270 in a title that may have only cost $1000 to produce in the first place.  The platform was unproven and the titles still would need new artwork and an HD output file loaded.  Again, a lot of the older stuff would have originally been shot in SD and not everyone does their own editing.  So, for awhile, only the very prepared or innovative got their stuff to Prime quickly and on their own.  It took me months to get my first titles up and after that I averaged one a month for a little over a year.  That was with me redoing the artwork, upscaling and captioning between doing other work.  (Starting to get a feel for why "Jack vs Lanterns" had to wait on editing for awhile?)

Eventually, distributors saw an opening and an untapped market.  Become the company that can get indies onto Prime and you can start making money with a split right away.  So, old titles and indies were acquired at a rapid rate by some very clever people and before the first year was over a deluge of horror, sci-fi and old drive-in fare had been dropped onto Amazon Prime.  All of a sudden retro influenced movies like "Alien Vengeance" and "The Lunar Pack" weren't that unusual and charming.

The second thing that changed was the pay structure.  Movies are now paid in tiers and as viewership drops, so does how much a filmmaker is paid per minutes of viewing time.  With a combination of more competition, less visibility and less pay, it becomes a question of whether or not volume can still make up for the difference between showing a movie "included with Prime" or charging $1.99 to see it.

I would  need 10 people to watch a feature movie from beginning to end for every one who rents it in order to make the same money.  So, for awhile anyway, we're suspending some of our titles from the "Prime" program.

How do I decide which titles to leave on Prime?

The titles that are still pulling good numbers on Prime will stay there.  With the ebb and flow of how things go, that will change month to month.  If a movie is making enough (in minutes, Amazon has suspended income reports because even they can't seem to figure out their new payment system) it will remain as an option on Prime.  No sense in dropping an income stream, but once a movie drops to the point where a few rentals would yield the same income, we'll turn Prime off for awhile.

This creates an "urgency" to see the films that are available included with Prime while they are there.  A movie that is always available as Prime has no need to be purchased or rented.  You're creating your own "over supply" of your product.  Plus, "Back on Prime" gives you something to promote.

The risk.

Since "minutes streamed over a 365 day period", is how they determine which tier of payment a movie is on, turning it off of Prime for too  long, especially if it's pulling any significant numbers, can run the risk of your movie dropping a tier because it will pull far fewer numbers as a rental.  This means when it goes back to Prime you may actually be paid less per view than if you had left it alone.

So, experiment at your own risk.  With so many titles I have some flexibility to try things out.  If I learn anything concrete, I'll pass it on here.