"So does this mean you've made 160,000 x .15 = 24 grand? In 2 months?"

I wish! Your follow-up post is correct - at the time of my post, it did equal around $400. The first payment is supposed to go out in August and it should be ~$500. If that's the average I'll see every 3 months, that isn't too bad, considering I honestly didn't think I'd see any money at all from it.

"One thing I don't understand is all the youtubers or wanna be youtubers saying that AVD doesn't pay as well. But to me it looks like it pays better for a lot less views. And the 500k hrs cap payout per year is like worrying about a problem that would only effect the top of the top."

Yeah, I'll take $70,000/year per title!

"I'm extremely interested in creating new content for AVD. But I think the issues are the same for any distribution model. And that is that you have to make compelling content that people want to watch. If not you won't make a dime and essentially be "cancelled" by default."

Which is what I love about AVD. Before this, my film had shown at some very small fests, a few people saw it at those. No distributor I contacted wanted it, and folks at the AFM asked: "Who's in it? Play at any big fests?" Seemed like my film was dead. I also didn't want to pay thousands in up-front fees to an aggregator to submit to Hulu/iTunes/Netflix... not on this first feature film attempt of mine. This was a no-budg film. So, the numbers I'm seeing on Amazon are very exciting: it's found an audience, and a large one at that. Now, I just have to make a better film.

"I'm glad that AVD has all these requirements and is weeding out unprofessional content."

The closed captions are the only requirement that stands out to me as any different than anyone else requires. Took a few hours to sub my feature, no sweat. I guess that's a deterrent to some people?

"What I wish that amazon would do is to make an AVD or Indie page or category so that these self published titles would have some avenue for natural discoverability."

I think that could go either way - maybe audiences would welcome an indie section, or maybe they'd avoid it due to some fear that the films are all amateur attempts. But then again, I don't see many films offered free for Prime viewers, which I believe may be the reason I've gotten so many views. I only have one rental and one buy, otherwise... and I'm pretty sure those were people I know... most of the films with recognizable names/larger budget films rent for 2.99/sell for 5-7.99. A rental on amazon for more than a dollar doesn't make sense to me - why wouldn't you redbox it?

Once AVD starts rewarding the top-viewed films with the share of $1 Mil, we'll get a better sense of what audiences on the site are watching... and then we can produce accordingly.

Maybe you could post your problem here for one of us to help you. I've sent a few emails to AVD and they've been great at answering my questions.

My feature "Palmdale" has been up for less than two months and been watched approx. 160K minutes' worth, which works out to around 2200 times, if they watched it all the way through. I haven't seen numbers like that on any other platform. My assumption is that people go to Amazon to watch longer-form content. On my feature's Amazon page there is a "People Also Watched" section with other low-budget crime/thriller indies, and I'm guessing there are lots of folks who just binge low-budget indies. I also have my film free to watch with Prime, which is proving much more lucrative than only offering Rent & Buy.

As far as driving people to my film's Amazon page - I run an ad on Facebook for $2/day, but Facebook's ad manager tells me only a couple hundred actually click it. So that tells me all the traffic I'm seeing to my film is people already on Amazon.

As soon as my feature was pulling in figures like that, I subtitled a short film and stuck that up there. Far fewer views, perhaps due to the subject matter, or because it's a short and people are there for features/binging episodic TV.

Put your film on Amazon and see how it does. To me, this is a no-bull marketplace. If people want to watch it, they will, and you'll see some - not much, but some - cash. What other platforms offer indie filmmakers the traffic Amazon gets, without up-front fees, and an audience that isn't there for 3 minute cat videos?

No, it's 15 cents per hour, Jason's post has the correct amounts per Amazon site.

Thanks, Nikhil! Past 55K now, hopefully it continues at this pace. Yes, better metrics would be very helpful for us, and hopefully they'll be implemented in the future and not at any extra cost. Best of luck with your feature & pilot.

Wiliam - that was an old trailer, so I made an updated one - should be live on the Amazon page soon:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6-O5Bs_KXM