When you want to use your Tradecast-powered online video platform to (also) offer one or more videos for a fee, it is smart to first think about the ways you can accomplish this. In this article, we'll list the most important questions to ask yourself before setting up Products on your video platform. These considerations will ensure that you can offer your premium videos on your video platform the right way.
Offering one or more videos on your video platform for a fee is done via the CMS of your video platform, under the heading 'Monetization'. There, you will find all the options at your disposal to monetize your uploaded videos. When you first see terms like 'Products', 'Plans' and 'Contracts', it's only logical that these terms don't mean that much to you yet. That's why in this article we'll take you through a number of questions you can ask yourself in order to monetize your videos in the best way possible.
More information about selling videos on your own platform can be found in the section 'Monetizing your video platform'.
1: What do you want to sell?
This first question seems very simple: 'what do you actually want to sell?'. Still, it's very wise to answer this question before you start working with the 'Monetization' module on your video platform. Do you want to sell just one video? Or a themed package with multiple videos, like Netflix and Disney+? Would you like to offer your entire video library for a fixed, periodic fee? Or do you want to set up a hybrid form: partly paid videos, partly free videos and partly a subscription to most of the videos on your platform, just like Amazon Prime does?
There are a number of different ways to monetize videos on your video platform:
- A Product containing one video, e.g. a recorded event or a live stream (TVOD)
- A Product containing one or more videos that - for a single payment - you can watch for a certain period of time (TVOD)
- A Product containing one or more videos that - for a periodic payment - you can watch 'forever' (SVOD)
By first writing down what your video products should look like, you can then use the CMS of your video platform to create Products and Plans in a much more targeted way.
2: How can I sell it?
If you know what you want to sell, it's time to create the right Products and Plans in the CMS of your video platform. A Product is a bundle of videos and settings that you - if you have filled in all the necessary information - can offer on your own video platform for (periodic) payment. A Plan is a bundle of 'rules' that together form an option that a buyer on your video platform can choose from in order to purchase a Product. An example of a Plan for an SVOD Product can be, for example: this Product costs $9.99 per month, which gives you one year's access to all included videos.
In this article we'll explain how to create Products and Plans for videos on your video platform.
3: How can I check if people are buying my Product?
As soon as you properly offer Products and accompanying Plans on your video platform, your viewers will be able to purchase them. A viewer who purchases a Product becomes a buyer and all information about your buyers - including successful, paused and unsuccessful purchases - is stored in both the CMS of your video platform and in the CMS of payment provider Stripe. To check if your Products are sold and to gain insight into the users who buy your Products, it is best to log into Stripe's CMS. Because Stripe is fully focused on handling payments that are initiated on your video platform, you can find most of the information about buyers of your Products in Stripe's CMS. You can also find, analyze and export the data generated by your customers for (commercial) follow-ups.
More information about selling videos on your own video platform can be found in the section 'Monetizing your video platform'.