Promoting feature length film with afiliate marketing

[James Jones]

I've got a feature length film for sale on Amazon. It's a satire of reality tv and movies like Battle Royale and Hunger Games in which a wino, a prostitute, a CEO, a security guard,a criminal, a top model and a bourgeois are locked up in a deserted warehouse and forced to fight for their lives. What would be the best strategy for promoting this work?

 

[mlogan09]

Im really interested to see how this works out when you decide uppon a method!

 

[James Jones]

Well finding the method is the key. If I have the means to manage the affiliate program it might be a sucess because I'm on disability presently and so I can spend the whole day prospecting for new affiliates.

 

[jcorkern]

Trailers on Youtube, press releases linking to them and you need to find a social media guru with a lot of followers to do a small campaign to get the word out. This all needs to be timed to release at the same time, take before and after screen shots of the view count, and then do another press release hyping the amount of views it got real fast. This will skyrocket it.

 

[James Jones]

I'm basically interested in using affiliate marketing. What I'm selling is basically a niche product so I would do a web search for sites using keywords that would indicate an interest in what I'm trying to promote ie; trash, gore, snuff, reality tv, stars, celebrities, torture, cannibalism. If they are willing to participate in the project then a banner could be put on their site, that's another question who puts the banner on their site them or me? And then I would of course pay them a percentage of benefits generated. If anybody knows how I could do this or where I might go to get advice it would be greatly participated. I'll even try to get you a role in my next project which would include a trip to Amsterdam and lots of fun.

 

[jcorkern]

You are going to have to find 20 to 50 small sites with small groups of followers like cotygeek.com or filmschoolrejects.com that reviews games and movies. You will need some affiliate software for them to track sales for them and since you are an unknown, you can basically forget any bigger sites like digitaltrends.com, hollywoodreporter.com or metacritic.com to take you on.

What you are asking for is an easy way out, and it does not exist. You may be the best director/actor/writer in the world, but that is worthless without exposure and marketing.

I know that as a professional internet marketer, there is no way I would do it without compensation up front or a tried and true brand because it cost me thousands of dollars to market products, and I want to be able to recover my investment plus a profit.

The only way you would get one of the latter 3 sites mentioned is to pay them up front.

Sorry for being so blunt, but as an unknown entity, you have choices, but none of them are what you are looking for from what you wrote.

 

[James Jones]

I'm not really that much interested in the more well known sites. I'm thinking of putting an ad banner on a lot of smaller sites, several thousand maybe more. What I'm interested in is how to go about doing it. How to make the banner and place on the affiliates sites, how to track sales so I can pay the affiliates and keep them happy.

 

[jcorkern]

Ok, first thing you need is affiliate tracking software or a 3rd party affiliate network. There are many places to get it but one of the best is idev, you can see them here iDevAffiliate - Affiliate Tracking Software - Affiliate Program Software This is the cheapest route. You will still need banners made, you can get them by opening an elance account or odesk, or rentacoder and hiring someone who does graphic art to make them for you. It's not that expensive.

Then there is 3rd party affiliate networks like shareasale, comission junction and 50 others. They can cost as little as 500 or so to get started (you still have to supply your own banners) and as much as 20 k to get started. They already have affiliate that they can advertise your offer too which makes it easier and faster because most can have you setup in 24 hours or less and give you instant access to thousands of affiliates.

If you choose the software (idev) you have to find these sites yourself and take the time to write an email to each one. A form or template email will not work because you are unknown, so you better make each one personal if you want results. Be prepared to have a trailer also so they can have it on their site or chances are you will never sell one single copy.

Your sales page or site better have professional copywriting also or you may never make a sale.

These are your options.

 

[Disciple67]

Interesting...what do y'all think of promoting full-length eBook novels with an affiliate program -- rewarding one's fan base while capitalizing on it? Too-slim profit margins to justify affiliate network membership fees?? How about using a self-hosted affiliate program then? Too many administrative headaches??

 

[Bruce61]

I dabbled in short films and know how competitive the market is. Assuming that it has good production values, story line etc, and stays to its genre then its only a question of being found.

Are you trying to sell it or promote it?

If you are after raising money to enable it to be shown (ie festival entry fees etc) have you tried crowd sourcing?