As part of the ongoing series of online markets, Infinicine presents an interview with Charles Choi from Caachi.com, a streaming and download service that specializes in independent film and is friendly to independent filmmakers.

[I]nfinicine: What services are offered on your site?

[C]aachi: Streaming online - We provide high resolution (700Kbps) streams of the films we offer. This enables a high-quality viewing experience.
Download to own - the films distributed in this fashion are “DRM free”, to provide the greatest user flexibility in viewing.
Download to disc - Films downloaded from Caachi can be burned directly to DVD or installed in a video iPod/iPhone.

[I]: What is the structure of the deal, i.e. flat fee, percentage of sale, ad revenue, etc. Provide terms if possible.

[C]:

• Distributors keep 75% of the sales revenue, with no expenses deducted
• Caachi partners with distributors on a non-exclusive basis
• There is no minimum time commitment
• We can restrict sales to geographic regions (based on IP filtering technology)
• Choose to sell your films as: 1. downloaded video, 2. streaming online, or 3. both
• The terms can be found here

[I]: Does your service sell into all territories?

[C]: By default, our service sells into all territories but can be restricted to countries using IP filtering technology.

[I]: How many people visit the site? How many are “members”? How many sales on average per title? What are the top-selling titles?

[C]: For the month of July, 2008 we had around 50,000 unique visits, a 76% increase from May, 2008.

Our top grossing titles are as follows: 1. Tripping with Caveh, 2. Venus Lives, 3. Dreams on Spec, 4. Preaching to the Perverted, 5. Dat Kho

[I]: What is the marketing strategy for the site? Why will customers purchase or rent from your site as opposed to other similar sites?

[C]: We sell films by using targeted online marketing techniques involving social networks and Web 2.0 technologies. Customers will buy films from Caachi because they understand that most of their payment will go to the filmmaker or distributor and not to Caachi.

[I]: What are the marketing opportunities for films on the site?

[C]: At Caachi, we recognize that that our films must be actively marketed online to reach their audiences. To this end, we do the following today:

• Caachi has an affiliate program which allows 3rd party blogs and other websites to help promote a film by placing an advertisement about that film on their website. A 20% sales commission is given to the affiliate, which is taken from the distributor share. Distributors can opt-out of the affiliate program.
• Caachi feeds trailers of distributor’s films to multiple UGC video sites and social networks such as YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook.
• We send periodic mailings to registered users to let them know about our offerings.
• We do targeted marketing to social networks for a select number of films in our library.
• In the near-future we intend to develop tools and widgets to allow filmmakers and distributors self-market their films through our website to social networks and blogs.

[I]: Can individual filmmakers sell to the site?

[C]: Yes.

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