Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary

[oskarsh]

@bendurso I am currently running my own Website where I do most of the Sales. I've dealt with ADSR and Loot Audio as well but find it annoying having to cross communicate sales and updates. I will definitely try to use Xchange. I have been contacted before but at the time did not really understand the need. Now I do.

[Lindon]

@iamlamprey said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

@iamlamprey actually @Lindon might be familiar with them too

Well here's my position based upon my experience with 3rd party distributors:

1. You need your own web site.
2. If you work with distributors then @d-healey is not entirely correct, about getting customers on to your email list, some distributors (e.g. APD) will provide you with the entire list of customer details at the end of each sale event, some of course(e.g. Loot Audio) just wont
3. The intermediaries, I found, are quite difficult to get on board with - no real reason - just it kept falling over for me, so I have limited experience.
4. Going via the intermediary route gives you no say at all with the end distributors, but it does save you the hassle of manually getting on-board
5. The distributors themselves are a real mixed bag, but in all cases sales wont be great if you cant get on the front page of their site, and frankly these days that's nearly impossible, either because they've bigger fish to fry, they are just too busy to care about you or because they are obtuse and haven't taken to you in some way.... I really have no idea some times.
6. The single most effective way to get sales is to partner with some(as many) organisations as you can.

Partner does not mean "get loaded on to the distributors web site", here's an example of what I mean. Several years ago I partnered with Loot Audio to build a new series of instruments, they did the instrument design, I did the Kontakt coding, and another guy who did the sound design - we were called Audio Reward. We got pushed onto the front pages of Loot Audio (then called Kontakt Hub I think) and we made quite a lot of sales.

So find some partners, as many as you can and work together - if that makes sense. Dragging in anyone who has any customer base at all will repay you all. I have in the past thought about trying to get all of us "Hise Developers" into one big group with a common web site so we all benefit form the traffic, but I'm not sure there's ever been an appetite for it.

[d.healey]

@Lindon said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

will provide you with the entire list of customer details at the end of each sale event

Are you allowed to contact them with marketing emails?

[Lindon]

@d-healey said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

@Lindon said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

will provide you with the entire list of customer details at the end of each sale event

Are you allowed to contact them with marketing emails?

they just send you the list - its up to you what you do with it...maybe start with a "thanks for purchasing..." email and see where you go from there.

[d.healey]

@Lindon

its up to you what you do with it

I'm not so sure. If you don't have a person's permission to send them marketing emails then you shouldn't be sending them. It could be that APD gets this permission for you from the customers of course, but I think they're US based and the rules are different there.

[Lindon]

@d-healey Well I would argue I'm NOT sending them marketing emails, just a "thank you " email and an option to opt in to marketing materials.

[d.healey]

@Lindon

Ah true, that would be a transactional email which is totally fine.

[bendurso]

Thank you all for the tips

@oskarsh said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

I've dealt with ADSR and Loot Audio as well but find it annoying having to cross communicate sales and updates.

Yes, it's the same reason I'm considering these intermediaries.

@d-healey said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

Are you allowed to contact them with marketing emails?

I think some of them have a disclaimer of "Your email will be shared with the developer." But I don't know how european legal it is. Anyway, I don't like that way.

@DanH said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

You'll be able to manage promotional campaigns directly with the resellers which can be advantageous.

Yes, this is a really good point. Do you know if some of them also act as intermediaries for promotions? It would be nice.

[bendurso]

@bendurso said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

Do you know if some of them also act as intermediaries for promotions?

I found that you can also do promotions on XChange. So it looks good :)

If you know of other intermediary distributors, let me know :)

[hisefilo]

@bendurso Hey buddy! Both ways will work in my opinion. From what I've seen, making a killer product is the key. Resellers and intermediaries (and customers) will come to you.

[iamlamprey]

@Lindon said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

some distributors (e.g. APD) will provide you with the entire list of customer details at the end of each sale event

yeah I agree that this one could get grey-area pretty quickly, APD does it well because the customer still orders through your site so capturing their data seems to be in-bounds

4. Going via the intermediary route gives you no say at all with the end distributors, but it does save you the hassle of manually getting on-board

yep the biggest drawing point for me is the automation/leverage -> letting the intermediary know about an upcoming promotion and having them echo that to every distributor seems like such a nice thing, I believe xchange also only takes 5% which is more than fair for the amount of work they offload

The distributors themselves are a real mixed bag, but in all cases sales wont be great if you cant get on the front page of their site, and frankly these days that's nearly impossible

Agree 100% here, even a paid option to get on the front page would be amazing, but those slots would likely be bought up by the bigger fish anyway so there'd need to be some time-restriction to make it fair for smaller developers to compete.

Some of these intermediaries might have more authority when pushing promotions, an email from XChange might be less likely to get "lost" than one coming from coolplugindev274@hotmail and therefore might improve ones chances of getting front-page exposure

6. The single most effective way to get sales is to partner with some(as many) organisations as you can.

We got pushed onto the front pages of Loot Audio (then called Kontakt Hub I think) and we made quite a lot of sales.

It sounds like partnering "unlocked the gate" for you, ideally the distributors would just have better, more consistent ways to get front-page exposure without needing to collaborate and create an entirely new product. Obviously if I was a distributor with a large pre-existing audience, I would also push my own products regularly since they would have the highest % returns

While partnering on new products is definitely a great opportunity, leveraging the warm audience that the distributor has spent years building should stay front and centre: I can't just go and ask PluginBoutique to start making tiktok videos about my instruments without having something equally valuable to provide to them in return, especially when they could be spending that same amount of time making content for a larger, more established developer

But perhaps creating the content myself first, getting in touch with the intermediary, and having them send that content to ALL of the distributors might be a powerful advantage

as always I appreciate the transparency

[d.healey]

@bendurso said in Direct Distribution vs Distribution with intermediary:

Xchange or Pluginvery

So I tried contacting pluginvery, just got a response from them. They're "not currently taking on new product lines" - at least not mine anyway :(

I'll try xchange next.

[d.healey]

I'm now progressing with the xchange sign up. There are a number of steps and they require quite a bit of info, but so far so good.

Looking at their list of vendors I see our own @gorangrooves is listed. How are you finding it?

[iamlamprey]

@d-healey best of luck! keep us posted

[gorangrooves]

@d-healey XChange is good to have to be able to conduct business with 3rd party sellers. It definitely cuts on extra BS you would need to deal with if doing it directly, so it is a preferred method.

In my experience, it has not been a major source of revenue. "Best Service" must have done a feature on us, as we saw some sales from them when they added us. Most sellers just add the content to their catalogs, and that doesn't do anything, really.

One approach would be to work with resellers one-on-one through XChange to get them to do a limited-time promotion of some sort. Without them making some kind of additional effort to push your products, just adding them to the catalog is pointless.

I think what we'll end up doing is seeing who is willing to do product pushes and offer some extra incentives, then evaluate the results. We'll probably rescind listings from resellers who haven't made any extra promotional efforts. I don't see any benefits to be listed in some massive catalog. Nobody really needs a sales platform. What we, brands, need is access to customers and a spotlight. If a seller can't provide that, they are of no value to us.

Having your own store and doing your own marketing is absolutely essential.

Regardless of where someone may purchase our products, they always must come to us to download them and get the license keys. That will never change.
Don't feel shy about emailing customers. Don't bombard them with offers, but rather provide some value or entertainment in emails.

I also think that more beneficial efforts would be strategic partnerships with brands that align with your approach, are not inundated with products, and have a good existing customer base.

An affiliate program is another good thing to have in place.

[Alisa]

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[virtuscapeaudio]

Hey guys I just signed up with ADSR and got on the front page!! @Lindon I think your idea for a HISE Dev website is a great Idea and I would be fully on board.