Digital Media Products: Outsource Or Do It Yourself?

There is renewed interest into creating digital media products. For many it was first looked at in reaction to the change eBay made to it's digital downloadable policy. EBay in essence said, no more downloadable products can be sold directly on eBay.

Ebay's change in policy affected thousands of sellers that were marketing downloadable digital products, mostly eBooks, on eBay. In order to continue to sell eBooks and other information products on eBay, those products had to be converted to digital media products. In other words, information products had to be sold in a physical format like a CD or DVD.

A funny thing happened when marketers started to investigate digital media products in depth. They found that there were ways to make even more money utilizing the digital media format. They found that digital media was perceived as a higher value product than a digital only product. Because of this, digital media products can be sold for higher dollars and can generate greater profits.

All of that leads to one thing. How to actually create digital media products from your digital information products? There is one main question to answer in regards to that, do you outsource your digital media production or do you do it yourself?

Outsourcing means you hire a third party to produce your physical product. Generally you would find a company that will produce your CDs or DVDs for you. You provide them the source material for the physical product, formatted and organized the way you want it, and then they actually produce the product from your source files.

Doing it yourself means that you actually produce the physical product yourself. You create the source files just like you would if you were outsourcing but then you burn the files to your own recordable media. You produce your own covers, inserts, CD or DVD labels and then assemble it all into a presentable package.

To determine which method is best for you a number of factors should be considered. First, you should have an idea of how much volume you plan on selling. That will dictate how much time it would take you to do it yourself. The logical first question is, will you have enough time to produce physical products yourself?

Your time is worth money, although if you have extra time available, you can make the argument that your time is not a direct cost. If you are on a very limited budget, your time is not a direct out of pocket cost. Once again, that is your determination.

If you don't have the time to devote to self production then you must either outsource or hire someone directly to work for you to produce the product. You will need to weigh the costs of both of those choices to pick the best one.

If you do have time, then you need to determine the hard costs of materials needed to produce your product. You compare those costs against the costs of outsourcing and then make your decision from there.

Whether to outsource your production of digital media or whether you should do it yourself is a fundamental decision you need to make if you want to be in the digital media market. Careful analysis of the costs and time factors involved in both need to be examined considering your particular circumstances to make the best determination. Which you choose will have a direct impact on how you do business.