How I Sold My Movie on Amazon Prime: 2022 Step-by-Step Tutorial 

Thanks a lot!

Thanks a lot!

Thanks! I just looked into it. It appears for the US you cannot. However you can for the UK.

No. Just sign up for taxes through your account settings

Thanks for watching!

Thanks a lot! And that's correct. You can only upload 1080p files through Prime Video Direct.

Thanks a lot for watching! I appreciate the kind words!

@@alexsrednoselac Grand day to you. This video was very helpful. I have a question for you. Once Amazon picks up your movie, How long did it take before you were able to see your film as an option to choose on Amazon Prime??? I am currently waiting for my Documentary to become available on Prime, Its been about a Week. Thank you in advance for your response. Wishing you a great day

@@Goldenera95 hey David. I don’t recall how long it takes, but I would assume a week or two. The initial process for me took around 3 weeks if I remember correctly.

@@sredy3330 Thank you for the speedy response. I was under the impression that once Amazon Prime picks up your movie its available immediately. I will keep checking. Thank you again 🙏🏾

@@Goldenera95 happy to help! They are notoriously slow on all updates.

They unfortunately don't accept shorts anymore. If you are looking to monetize, I would suggest starting an OTT platform. You can create one for free on Vimeo. Simply do a Google search for Vimeo OTT.

@@alexsrednoselac Thanks and Regards

My recommendation is try to make your movie as clean as possible. I had a lot of brands and logos that my lawyer told me would be fine in the case of fair use. The issue would be if you talk about those brands in a defamatory way. There's a huge difference in a character drinking a can of coke, and the character saying "Coke causes X problems." So as long as you have nothing like that I think you are fine. With the other material like b-roll and music, as long as you do your due diligence you should be fine. Avoid copyrighted material as much as possible.

If it’s already live I would assume you’d be fine. I think at this point you’d have to take it offline yourself.

Thanks for watching!

Renting is still available, so I'm not sure what you are talking about. I just helped someone with their film and it's still available for rent. I initially did promotional campaigns, but I stopped after the film slowed down. I don't really think your marketing campaigns should be changing. You just have a few less options to advertise.

I used Rev.com for all of my captions.

Thanks for watching!

They stopped accepting documentaries a few years ago. I don’t know if that’s changed or not.

Absolutely! I’ll let you know when I do.

@@sredy3330 sir, there is no option for indians to upload, but now indian films are streaming on Amazon

Hmm that's strange. I would try creating an H264 file. My guess, it could be file size. PR HQ files are generally massive. I personally used Davinci Resolve to export mine. You can download Resolve for free. They have a "Master H264" preset that I used as my respective master H264 file created from the ProRes HQ main master file. That's what I would try first. I unfortunately don't have much experience with FCP to give any advice. The resolve work around will only cost you time. The basic Resolve is free and the Studio version is the paid version. Download the non-studio version, import your PR HQ file, and do the render with Resolve's H264 Master preset. This will give you a higher H264 file that FCP or Premiere.

You’ll need to use an aggregator or distributor. You can try using like filmhub. Amazon for Italy is likely part of their RoW territory (rest of the world) which requires one of these.

@@alexsrednoselac Thank you very much for the previous answer ... I'm sorry I ask you one more thing, my Italian film is called "TODO SE PUEDE" I don't understand the part about the metadata on Filmhub. Do I have to translate this Spanish title into English? Does the poster also have to be in English? Do you think I can leave the title in Spanish? Thanks, you save my life with the answer

@@MarcelloCrea I would check with Filmhub directly.

@@sredy3330 👍

I believe India is part of Amazon's RoW (Rest of the world) territory. Their rules may be different from the US, but you would have to find a distributor or aggregator that has Amazon's RoW. They don't offer it to individual filmmakers. I personally use FilmHub for the RoW territories. I does not cost anything up front, but FilmHub takes a percentage of the profits. Hope this helps!

Thanks a lot! Yes, you are correct about the rentals and purchases. So for instance, if someone rents your movie for $3, you will get $1.50. Same math for rentals. The Prime rate varies, but usually it was at least $.01. Despite that number being so low, it was more profitable just because it amount of people who watched the movie. I had around 1.2M watched minutes, and I would say 95% of that came from the SVOD portion of Prime. I'm not sure how you'd get featured like that. I promoted mine on Facebook. Honestly, word of mouth did wonders as it blew up after a 6 months or so after I stopped promoting it.

They are pathetic but it's most peoples only option.

I don't believe they do. I'm sure if they suspected copyright infringement they would pass on it. I'm going to assume they do checks before they approve the film. They don't require paperwork or anything.

Thanks a lot Abilash!

Yes it has to be 1080p HD

Thanks a lot!

I'm not sure. I can only speak on the American side. You'll have to create an account and try.

Do we have to go through an agent?

I'm not sure what the language means, but unfortunately Amazon doesn't accept shorts anymore. I would recommend using Filmhub to see what other platforms you can get on. Or use something like Vimeo OTT to create your own platform to sell the film. Best of luck.

Thanks for your swift response. How can i get an agent who can help me market my short films. I want to sell them on netflix Amazon hulu and youtube channel. How do i go about this? Thanks

@@thecrossdramaministry4757 Thanks! Unfortunately I don't have a good answer for you as I don't have an agent myself. A lot of that is going to highly depend on some of the technical aspects of the film. For instance, Netflix has a specific list of cameras that can be used for films on their platform. The best way to pitch to these platforms on your own is to use an aggregator. Filmhub, for example, is an aggregator. They don't take fees upfront, so it's harder to get on those bigger platforms. Try looking into a company called Indie Rights. They are pretty highly respected for lower budget films. You can also try other small distributors like Gravitas Venturas, but you may not make a lot of money with them. Wish I had better answers, but that's what I know from my research and experience.

Netflix doesn't buy shorts. They don't even buy indie features anymore unless, you have awards from top tier festivals or a name cast. And no agent is gonna waste time with your shorts. Times have changed, this is not 2104 anymore.

Thank you so much! Glad you found it helpful.

Mostly. They don’t accept as much content and you cannot distribute on the subscription version of prime. Just for purchases and rentals. Otherwise it’s pretty much the same. I made an updated version along with a q&a video that you can check out if needed.

@@alexsrednoselac Ok thanks so much. I need to see the update video

No problem!

Thanks a lot!

Hey you wouldn’t want to collaborate by chance?

It’s free to upload.

It’s not. The buy and rent are your only options on Prime now without a distributor.

@@alexsrednoselac Thank you very much. Do you have any recommendations for a distributor for indie projects...

@@VMM_20 For a short doc, I don't. I don't know of any places that distribute short films let alone documentaries. You could try using Filmhub, but I can't guarantee it will get shown on Prime. Also to my knowledge, Prime doesn't even accept short form content or documentaries, so you might be double screwed there. Filmhub would likely be your best bet in general for this. I have a video walkthrough on the channel as well on how to use them.

@@alexsrednoselac Thank you very much Alex.

@@VMM_20 Happy to help. Please let me know if there's anything else I can try to answer.

If you don't own the copyright, you shouldn't be publishing a piece of media onto Amazon. If you do own the copyright, you still own the copyright. Uploading to Amazon is non-exclusive, meaning they don't have exclusivity to that piece of content. If you own the copyright, the only person who can give you a copyright claim on RU-vid is yourself. If you upload to RU-vid when you have an exclusivity deal with another platform, you could be breaching your contract. So if none of that applies to you, you are safe to upload to RU-vid. I am on Amazon, Tubi, Vudu, and several smaller platforms and was still able to upload to RU-vid. I took my movie off of RU-vid because once I got on those platforms, I wanted it to make as much as it could.

And as far as the money, you need to decide what your end goal is. If it's to make money, then uploading to Amazon would be wise because it's the biggest distributor for indie filmmakers. Even if you don't want to make money, it's still wise to upload there because, again, it's the biggest platform for indie filmmakers. When it comes to money, you have a better chance of making dollars from Amazon, whereas other platforms you'd make pennies. It's entirely dependent on what you are trying to get out of it.

@@alexsrednoselac thanks for the insight

@@alexsrednoselac blessed to have you explain things to me. I’m really grateful

Happy to help!

You are correct and this comment demonstrates why it's important to have multiple outlets for your movie. Relying on Amazon alone isn't enough.

Can i post my movie on both Prime video and RU-vid?