How to Make a Professional (Amateur) Porn Film #8 – Selling

With your movie finished, you’re faced with the hard, final, stage of the process – turning your epic into money. However good your movie is, it’ll only provide an income, and something for you and the other monks to do between services, if you can get it noticed. I suggest:

• Give it away. Getting people to pay for things is harder than getting people to talk about them. Your first objective should be to get your movie into the hands of people who like the sort of thing you’ve made – bloggers, reviewers, store owners, or anyone else with an audience. Everyone likes to break a story, if you send a professional package, with a compelling explanation of who you are and what you’re trying to do, it’s unlikely that you’ll be ignored.
• Build buzz. Even if your aim is to sell out to the first studio that offers you a directing gig, understand that your power to negotiate is directly linked to your profile. The more work you do building an audience, the more you’ll be offered for your movie.
• Blog. This is really about building buzz. If I’d made a movie myself today I’d give it away free, in pieces, via a videopodcast. As far as I’m aware it’s not been done yet so, in addition to giving people a taste of your film, it’s also newsworthy. Making DVD’s available for sale to people who enjoy the film as clips is a great way to start selling units. There are a thousand similar and better ideas than that. Content is king, exploit it. When people are excited about your material you can find a way to sell it to them. Other bloggers always need stuff to talk about. Be that stuff.
• Hold an event. This needn’t be complex or expensive. If it was me, I’d do a deal with a stripclub to hold a launch event. I’d promise to publicize a slow night for them (Tuesday or Wednesday) and they’d get to sell dances to the people I brought in. Call it a Premiere and invite all the local bloggers down along with anyone else you’d like to know about your production and all the stars. It’s an easy way to look serious about what you do. Sell autographed copies of the movie at the event and you should recoup anything you spend on it.

Sam’s Swollen Tip: Packaging design is key to your success. People won’t think to watch your DVD/clip if the packaging doesn’t draw them in. Conversely you can sell almost anything if the box it comes in is nice enough. Spend time and money on making your website/blog/box look good. Don’t be forced to tell people ‘…it’s a lot better than it looks.’

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