Posted by nobody special on 11/09/07 05:24

One alternative is to price it low, but add sponsorship, underwriting
or ads to it to offset the lower price. The problem in getting this
done is in how you prove to a sponsor your doc will get seen by enough
people to justify his investment. Your odds are best I think if you
are in a super-narow niche market and only a few manufacturers supply
to that market.

For example in radio control modeling, there are only 4 main makers of
the radio systems. Say your documentary is about one aspect of the
hobby like giant scale aerobatics, or quarter-scale racing, where
demads on the radio system are high, and modelers easily spend over a
grand for their radio systems.

Perhaps you contact the 4th biggest radio manufacturer and show them
your video and ask if they want to underwrite some of the cost of the
production in order to sell it for ten bucks from their web site, with
you hndling fulfilment, and you split the profits whatever percentage
seems reasonable. or they have a thousand printed up to and out at the
biggest annual trade shows as a booth giveaway.

They get a special commercial in the beginning of the DVD, you can
set that in an authoring program so it can't be fast-forwarded or
skipped, like the FBI warning against copying on rented movies. While
this will always annoy some folks, most will like the fact they are
getting the DVD for only ten bucks.

Moreover, you then don't care if anybody wants to pirate it: as far
as the underwriter is concerned, the more people that see their
product, the better, and by keeping the price of the DVD so low, a
pirate would be taking a loss trying to undercut your price, so he'd
tend to not even try. You make a profit, you build a following for the
next project, the sponsor gets his targeted media advertising, the
viewers get a great product at a great price, everybody wins.

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