We produce original movies for a niche market (spanking). Sales have been pretty decent on DVD and VHS, and now I am ready to expand into binary distribution.
So I'm torn though between a membership section and a "Pay Per View" deal.
The Pay Per View deal with Surfnet Corp. sounds pretty attractive. I pay them around $500 a month, send 'em the dvds, and they do all the work. Then they take about $6.00/gig for the streaming bandwidth and 13.5% for the merchant fee. They charge everywhere along the line, though, for encoding the dvds, monthly storage, etc.
Alternatively I can do a membership site. Bandwith charges will be lower, and I'm in control of everything, not to mention the rebills.
The bad part is I just can't imagine having to take 2 dozen full length movies and break them each into 10 or 15 scenes and build the thumbs, etc... That seems to lend itself well to a weekly teen bj site with 10 minutes of action but with our epic 70 minute movies I'm not sure...
Also, the theater deal can yield multiple resolutions, big movies for cable customers, streaming video that can be fast-forwarded, etc.
So I guess it all comes down to - is streaming pay per view the wave of the future - do surfers like it - or do I just go with a plain membership site???
S.T.