Many independent musicians and filmmakers, trainers or self
help authors doing DVD authoring or CD production are
looking for ways that they can handle their own CD or DVD
production and orders for their work by adding e-commerce
components to their websites for an online store. The
entire process can be cumbersome, confusing, and expensive.
However, there is a new On Demand concept which allows for
CD and DVD duplication, production, manufacture and sale of
an artist's work on an as needed basis. This allows you to
sell your products one at a time and ship to anyone
worldwide. It also helps independent artists with cash flow
because the orders are not billed until the end of the
month, long after the orders have been placed and paid for
by customers.
Today it's much easier to integrate an online storefront
with all the features for order processing. This allows
creative people the time to be creative and produce as
opposed to worrying about their website and e-commerce. But
the challenge is that an online store is not something you
can set up and manage by yourself easily. That's why you
should look for a trusted provider of online store
solutions.
Online stores are rather complex with layers that require
implementation, from the web copywriting and design
aspects, to branding the online storefront, and to choosing
and adding shopping cart functionality, and finally the
search engine optimization and marketing required to help
people to search and find your website. Then there is
merchant account creation for MasterCard and Visa or other
credit card providers, content protection, privacy and
security issues of both your content and the customers'
privacy, managing the downloads, backend software
integration, database management, selling, fulfillment and
delivery. And that does not even include the fact that you
must keep track of accounting, taxes and order processing,
and possibly be set up for international currencies, laws
and languages.
The best On Demand e-commerce solutions are fully hosted
online storefronts that include a store wizard that makes
it easy for you to set up and maintain. There's also fraud
protection, buyer care, and marketing tools like affiliate
responders, that help you to communicate with and manage
your customers so they will come back to your online store.
Ultimately the Internet offers many new opportunities for
commerce, but with it comes vast competition, so it is also
important to make sure that customers can find your online
store in the first place. That's why your e-commerce
solution provider should also include search engine
optimization for that purpose.
In the end, the costs associated with On Demand DVD
authoring production and distribution will mean no-hassle
e-commerce and it is a really easy way to make your
business more productive and profitable.
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Kristin Gabriel is the marketing communications director
for Acutrack, Inc.(http://www.acutrack.com). The company
enables customers to create, publish and deliver custom
content for DVD and CD distribution worldwide. Acutrack's
proprietary On Demand production produces and ship custom
packaged CDs or DVDs one at a time.
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