You are not a distributor

By DTL and MAT
Posted February 26, 2026

Fundraising and distribution are the two hardest challenges that independent creators face. Of the two, distribution is harder. For proof, look at the large number of movies that are made but never distributed.

Finding distribution can be so difficult that many creators seek to bypass what they think of as gatekeepers. Some of these creators try to become distributors themselves.

Sometimes these creators manage to combine stupidity, ignorance, wishful thinking, entitlement, and self-righteousness into a toxic stew that, while doing them no good, can serve as object lessons to the rest of us of what not to do.

First thing you might wanna do is read this blog’s article “No, you haven’t invented ‘Netflix for indies’”. I haven’t found anything rebutting that piece since it was posted last year, although I do notice that these same Unfinanced Wantrepreneurs are now using AI to make their websites and apps.

Let’s start this article with a confession: I got into it with a kid on Facebook. “He deserved it!” is no defence. But he dug himself in deeper and deeper, and didn’t even realize how bad he was making himself look. Still, he can serve as a kind of cautionary tale.

This month I saw in the Facebook movie-making Group “Low-Budget / Independent Film Makers” the announcement of the launch of yet another website pretending to offer creators a distribution outlet (the conversation can be seen on Facebook in this thread). Let’s call this kid RL3 in keeping with our trope around here of crediting by initials. RL3 unleashed his new business venture on the world:

RL3 (2026-02-11 @ 18:27): I’m about to have my own website where you can upload and sell your movie.

DTL (2026-02-12 @ 07:56): I’m afraid that everyone in the world has already had this idea. They all fail for the same reasons. Make sure you do your research, know your USP, and have funding in place.

RL3 (2026-02-12 @ 10:36): http://deezmovies.com/

DTL (2026-02-23 @ 10:52): Oh dear.

I was perhaps a bit curt. But my point stands. There were half a dozen such ventures promoted in this same thread. There are dozens of these announced every single week of the year, in all the movie-making Groups on Facebook. Right now someone is coming up with the Totally Original Idea of how they can “circumvent the gatekeepers” and “put creators in charge“ and “disrupt the industry” and yadda yadda.

All these Unfinanced Wantrepreneurs are stymied by the same chicken-or-egg problem: without content they cannot attract subscribers, and without subscribers they cannot attract content.

Here is what you saw if you visited RL3’s DeezMovies website on the day it launched to the public:

See that? Eight different categories of movie, and every single one reported, “No movies found in this category.” There were no movies at all available on his distribution website when he launched it before the public.

This kid literally opened a store when he had nothing to sell. He opened an empty store and invited customers to come in.

It should not be news to anyone that you can’t be in business if you have nothing to sell. This is not rocket surgery. If you have no movies, you are not ready to launch your movie-distribution website! Don’t launch your website yet! Find some movies first!

Now look at the bottom-right corner of the website, where it says, “© 2024 DeezMovies, Inc.” Note that year. This means that, at a minimum, he was working on the project throughout 2025. He had at least a year to line up, oh, even one single movie to have on his distribution service when he launched it. And he didn’t do that.

This is not an amateur mistake; this is not a newbie mistake. This is a bonehead mistake. If you knew what you were doing, you would not do this.

This kid thinks he understands business! Yet here is what he was asking for public input about, at least a year after he started work on his venture and less than two months before he launched it to the public:

RL3 (2025-12-23 @ 18:12): Hey everyone, just need some opinions. I’m making a website / streaming service. Do you guys think it would be better to have each movie for sale individually? Like let’s say $10 each no commercials? Or have it free kind of like Tubi and we just show commercials / advertisement.

Obviously there’s pros and cons to each. The free version we could make a lot on advertisers or none if nobody likes the website hahaha and same for the purchasing model.

At the moment I don’t think I can do a subscription service because I won’t have enough material to justify charging somebody a membership.

Let’s get this straight: After working on his business for at least a year, and two months before he launched, he didn’t know where his business’s income would come from.

So what was he doing for the year or more that he wasn’t working on his business plan, his funding, his marketing, his promotion, his suppliers, or his audience?

Why, he was working on his website, of course.

Think about that. Think about all the things that he wasn’t working on — all the specific tasks he needed to accomplish for this venture, and all the basic business of running a business, that he just wasn’t doing — because he was playing with his website design and dreaming big dreams.

He is like a garage band, designing their album covers before they can play any songs.

Incidentally, see the social-media icons in the lower left of the DeezMovies website? Those are just graphics; they don’t link to the existing DeezMovies social-media profiles. So he’s not even a good Web designer, on top of being not a good businessperson.

In fact, I can find no evidence that “DeezMovies, Inc.” is incorporated at all, despite the name. He says he’s in Atlanta, but the Georgia Corporations Division seems to have no record of any business entity by this name. Perhaps his incorporation is pending (after more than a year?). Or perhaps he thinks that “Inc.” is just something cool to put after his business’s name, and doesn’t know that it has a specific legal meaning and that using it improperly carries legal penalties.

Some poor, benighted newbie in the Group asked for more information about RL3’s distribution website, and this kid revealed that he knowingly opened an empty store:

RL3 (2025-12-12 @ 16:50): It just went live today so unfortunately there’s no content on it yet. But you can still check it out for yourself. Sign up as a creator or as a viewer.

I will be filming my first feature film around Maine so that’s how I came up with this idea because I don’t want to have to deal with bad distribution deals. I will just be selling my movies myself on my website directly to the consumer.

If you sign up as a Creator, you will see that there is a $25 fee. I did this thinking that it will deter a lot of the low-quality movies because as you know there is many low-quality movies. Also, it is just to pay for the time to view the movie because imagine having to watch hundreds of submissions it’s just impossible to do it for free.

That $25 will go to having five different viewers. Watch your movie. It will then get a rating from everyone and if it’s rated pretty good your movie will be approved. If our viewers think it’s a low-quality movie weather production-wise or creative-wise it will be declined and we will let you know why it was declined.

Do you have a feature film ready to go?

Oh, he plans to make his first feature soon, does he? Good for him! (Seriously!) Let us hope that project is better thought-out than his distribution website. Alas, I predict he’ll be one of those creators in such a hurry to shoot-shoot-shoot that he forgets to write and revise his script. Anyone taking bets?

Has he ever made any movies at all? Has he ever been on a movie set? Does he even know how movies are made?

He’s paranoid about getting a bad distribution deal for the movie he hasn’t made. Has he ever met a distributor, or even seen one from a distance? Or has he just read the same horror stories we all have, and is kind of pre-embittered at a system he’s never dealt with? I suspect the latter.

He also admitted that he is unwilling to do the work of finding movies for his distribution website. Read that again: He is refusing to acquire the things he wants his business to sell. He said it’s “impossible” to do that work for free. He is wrong again, of course; it is hardly beyond most people’s abilities to sit on their ass and stare at their TV. He just doesn’t want to do it unless he’s getting paid. He is literally unwilling to invest his own time in his own business.

He seems to believe we should pay the startup costs of his for-profit busines venture. Isn’t that literally his job, as the business founder, to fund or find funding for his business — and to keep funding it until it can stand on its own feet? Does he literally not understand how capitalism works?

His first and only “solution” to the Very Big Problem of him not getting paid was to leap right to charging creators to put their movies on his website. Actually, that’s not true, is it? He wants to charge creators to submit their movies to his website; there’s no guarantee they’ll be accepted.

This is where he crossed the line from “clueless newbie” to “entitled exploiter”.

He started perpetrating the common scam (even his scams aren’t original): the vanity-press scam. He decided he is in the business of ripping off creators.

Every Writer knows that if a “publisher” asks you for money, they’re not a real publisher. Every movie-maker knows that if a “distributor” asks you for money, they’re not a real distributor. I said that myself, to much agreement, earlier in this same thread.

In so many words: RL3’s DeezMovies is not a real distributor.

Distributors make their money from exhibitors and viewers, not from creators. Unfinanced Wantrepreneurs like RL3 are scammers. To be charitable, most of these individuals aren’t even doing it deliberately. They’re just so dumb they don’t even realize that’s what they’re doing. They never thought it through, and they’re entitled and greedy.

RL3 is even worse than a vanity-press scammer. Those guys dangle the promise of “Be a published author!” to naive newbies, then charge them (a lot!) for their (usually serviceable but not great) print-on-demand service. It’s a rip-off; you could do everything they do for yourself for less money. These newbies don’t become “published authors”; their wallets are lighter, and they have a basement full of trade paperbacks they now have to sell somehow.

But at least they have a book they can hold in their hands! RL3 won’t give you a DVD you can hold in your hands. He didn’t even promise that he will put your movie on his website if you pay him; you might wind up with literally nothing in exchange for your money. His business is not even a vanity press.

DeezMovies is not a distributor; it has no viewers to place a movie in front of, and no plan for how it might acquire some. It is at best a video-hosting website. Being generous, it’s in the same business as YouTube — if YouTube had no viewers and nobody knew it existed, and if every movie that was posted needed RL3’s approval, and if you had to pay RL3 to consider your movie.

Note particularly how self-righteous he got about his scam: “It costs me money to operate my business.” Did you figure that out all on your own, kid? You must be clever or something.

Nobody cares; that is literally your business. The mere fact that your businesses has expenses (duh) doesn’t entitle you to other people’s money; it’s a factor to be included in your business plan. Oh, but you don’t have a business plan, do you, RL3? You just like playing with your website design and dreaming of being a big-shot.

Notice also that he wanted to pay his business’s hypothetical employees $2.50 an hour to evaluate the submissions — five bucks per person per feature-length movie. That is below minimum wage. Add labour laws to the legal troubles this kid is inflicting on himself.

And where are these reviewers going to come from? He has never even thought of that. Apparently they will just magically show up because he wants reviews — the same way creators will just magically show up because he wants submissions, the same way advertisers will just magically show up because he wants advertising, the same way viewers will just magically show up because he wants an audience, and the same way we’ll magically start paying him because he wants money.

At this point I’m just shaking my head, wondering how bad the inevitable car-wreck will be. I’ve seen people just like this doing and saying things just like this, and I know how this story ends. There’s no happy ending here. It’s just a question of how deep a hole this kid is going to dig for himself — and, unfortunately, how many well-meaning but naive creators he will drag down with him.

So I wade back in:

DTL (2026-02-20 @ 12:15): Yep — this is the same idea as everyone else’s. And of course you’re trying to scam new or naive creators into paying you. You have clearly done no research at all into the field you’re trying to enter, and have no business plan. Anyone can do everything you offer for less money than your “submission fee”.

Seriously, dude: just stop for a little while and do some work on the project before you go live. You’re trying to start at the top and be a one-person conglomerate, but you have literally nothing to offer anyone. You have no movies. You have no audience. You have no funding. You have no expertise, experience, or track record. You have no plan (a dream is not a plan). You’re just another Unfinanced Entrepreneur, trying to build yourself a business with other people’s work. If you could show how your own movie succeeded, you might have some credibility.

I’m a big supporter of self-distribution, but 30 years of watching dreams just like this amount to nothing suggests that this is not a viable method. If anyone wants to discuss independent distribution, I’m willing!

Meanwhile, David S. and others: I’m not gonna tell you not to pursue this venture, but be aware that this is not your big break.

DTL (2026-02-20 @ 12:44): Think what your offer sounds like to people who aren’t you: “I’ve opened a candy store. No, I don’t have any candy in stock. But if you want me to sell your candy and give you some of that money, you can pay me $25 and I’ll consider it. No, I have no customers; why do you ask?”

Seriously: look at what he’s saying. Look at his business plan. He just launched his business, and right now he has no goods, no suppliers, and no customers. So what is he offering? Is he offering anything at all?

We know he has nothing to offer the audience, because there are no movies for an audience to watch.

We know he has nothing to offer creators, because he has no audience to put their movies in front of.

And we know that he feels very, very strongly that somebody should be paying him money for his time and effort.

So what does that add up to?

RL3, dude, you’re not even in business, because you have literally nothing to offer anyone. Why would anyone pay you money? What good or service are you giving them in exchange? Nuttin’, that’s what.

This kid lived down to my expectations immediately, hurling fact-free insults and revealing (some of) the depths of his stupidity, ignorance, and contempt:

RL3 (2025-12-20 @ 16:23): Well people charge rent for stores so your argument is invalid. Go take a business class. Because you’re neither good at business or the arts since you haven’t sold anything. Good try buddy but you need to learn both business and film. I’m not gonna sit and watch a shitty movie for free because guess what it costs me money to upload to my website.

So there I just taught you something new about the streaming business that’s why YouTube reduces the file sizes.

Also fix your attitude. With that attitude you won’t get anywhere

To begin, he means “unsound”, not “invalid”. To continue, he’s wrong: YouTube doesn’t reduce file sizes because it costs them money to upload or host files; they reduce file sizes so movies can be delivered over limited-bandwidth Internet connections.

He goes on to be wrong again. He is factually incorrect: businesses do not charge rent to their suppliers. It’s the other way around: businesses buy goods from their suppliers, and jack up the price to sell on to their own customers. That’s how business works. This kid thinks other people should take a business class?

(Because I know more about marketing that RL3, I also am aware of exceptions. For example, supermarket tabloids like the National Requirer pay supermarkets to display their papers at the check-out counter.)

What’s with all the name calling and impugning my track record when he doesn’t know anything about me? (I’m doing quite well, actually; thanks for your concern. But if I weren’t, how does that make your bonehead decisions smarter?) This is how he responds to criticism? He hurls fact-free invective? He just makes up stuff out of his head, and flings it like a monkey flinging feces? Does he think that enhances his credibility?

I can see that he is a very angry individual who has not received the rewards from the world that he feels he is owed, despite the fact that he currently has no accomplishments to his name. I expect he views himself not as a nobody (which, let’s face it, he is; it’s how we all start out, and how most of us finish), but as a “pre-fame celebrity”. You’ve heard the rhetorical question, “What’s an artist without a temperament?” RL3 here is a temperament without an artist. I’m sure he would be an absolute joy to work with.

The most appalling thing about the kid’s drivel here is his opinion of the work of his business’s suppliers. He thinks already, before the fact, that the movies that creators will submit to him will be “shitty”. Hear that, creators? He thinks your movies are shitty! I’ll bet that really makes you want to submit now, doesn’t it?

Why would any businessperson volunteer in public that he thinks his suppliers’ goods are “shitty”? Especially when he currently has no suppliers and is trying to attract some? Even if you think that, why wouldn’t you keep it to yourself? What kind of reaction do you think you’ll get from creators when you tell them up front you think their movies are shitty? Does this present you in a good light? This kid’s both an exploiter and stupid.

And he wants you to pay him to watch your shitty movie. Usually it’s the other way around: people pay you to watch your movie, shitty or not. And, if he feels your movie is not too shitty, he might deign to put it on his website, where it will be seen by . . . well, by nobody, in fact, because he has no audience and no plan to get one.

He apparently believes that he should not have to do the work of establishing his business. He says he’s not going to watch the “shitty” movies submitted to his website unless he’s paid. Yet again the Unfinanced Wantrepreneur thinks other people should pay him to set up his business. Any bets on whether he thinks he should get the same $2.50 an hour he promised others? Or maybe he should get a bit more, ’cause it’s his idea and he has expenses?

Yes, kid, it does cost you money to put movies online. That sort of thing is known as a “business expense” or “cost of doing business”. Was this kid surprised to learn that businesses had expenses, and that they had to pay these expenses with money?

So far he’s adhering to the same Failure Paradigm as all the other over-entitled and under-talented Unfinanced Wantrepreneurs who come up with this same Totally Original Idea, right down to the defensive, fact-free insults. How dare anyone respond to their disruptive, outside-the-box thinking with anything other than acclaim?!

I responded:

DTL (2026-02-20 @ 19:39): Dude, this is what I do; I don’t work a day job. I’ve seen ’em come, and I’ve seem ’em go, and with every comment you’re confirming that you’re one of ’em; you are not destined for success. How old are you, 17? You don’t even know how you’re making yourself look, do you? I’m sure all the creators whose work you just called “shitty” will be rushing to submit to your audience-less website. Well, you be you; I wish you all the success you deserve.

RL3 (2026-02-20 @ 22:31): You’re such a clown like the rest of the other “creatives” who are making zero money on their films. Or the other crew members who aren’t working on any sag shows and just working as bartenders haha.

Wow you’re such hero! Look ebryone he wants to charge you to view your movie! He’s scamming! Again you know nothing of how to run a business I literally beat your whole argument by saying businesses charge rent but yeah just skip.over that.

And yes there are a lot of shitty movies. Clearly your movies are shitty since they haven’t made any money. I started watching a movie on Tubi from someone in this group but didn’t finish it because it was shitty.

Post your numbers and show the group how much money your movies made otherwise just zip.it little manm. There is a guy from Atlanta here who’s just like you talks a lot of [shit emoji] but then I have heard from others that know him and seen his movies that his movies suck and again made no money. Just because you’re a failure doesn’t mean everyone else is. It’s you not the industry.

But RL3 is not in The Industry, is he? Remember, he plans to make his first feature this spring. As far as we know, this will be his first attempt at making anything; there’s certainly no record of him ever making a movie before.

Or does he work in The Industry? If you check the edit history of his post, you can see that his first attempt at a reply read:

RL3 (2026-02-20 @ 22:31): Gotcha budd. You’re just like all the crew members out here in Atlanta who haven’t worked on the SAG set in years and are just losers and negative and just bad at their job. Otherwise it would be working on set. I just got off working on Chad Powers a sag after show. You probably never even heard of.

But yeah buddy you’re not worth my time. I’m over here hustling making $3,000 a day. What do you making?

(When he says “sag after show” he probably means “SAG-AFTRA show”. And I don’t know why it makes him feel like an Inside People that he knows about a widely-promoted, mainstream show with major stars on a Disney Omnicorp streamer; one of the biggest media companies in the world has gone to considerable time and expense to make sure that this is not an obscure little show. That’s just a weird thing to say. Probably wise he deleted it.)

RL3 boasted he made $3,000 a day working on this show. Wow! Surely he must be a vital part of the project. Let’s trot off to IMDb, find the show’s page, check “Full cast and crew”, and search for RL3’s name . . .

And there it isn’t! Nothing. Not listed. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have an IMDb page at all. (Not completely surprising; remember, he is hoping to make his first movie this spring.)

Well, I’m not sure what we should make of that. Was he lying about the whole thing, and wisely decided to cut it? Is there a grain of truth in there somewhere? Maybe he works for a football stadium, and helped set up the venue because the show wanted to shoot there. Three grand a day seems like an exaggeration; maybe that’s why he deleted the claim.

If he really makes that much money, he can certainly afford to fund his own business and pay himself for the work he says it’s impossible to do for free. He could treat his venture like he’s actually starting a real business.

I responded with appropriate seriousness:

DTL (2026-02-20 @ 23:13): Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAH!

DTL (2026-02-20 @ 23:32): Anyhoozies, back to the actual topic: Your idea is not a good one, and you don’t have the skills or resources to pull it off. You’ve done no research on your idea. Some of what you say contradicts other stuff you say. You have no funding for your business; you want to build your venture on other people’s work. You have no audience for your website; you have literally nothing to offer creators, and thus nothing to offer audiences. You stated that you don’t plan to participate in your own business because it’s not worth your time. You’ve insulted your own suppliers. You can’t even write well; witness your constant grammar, spelling, and logic errors. The one thing that comes through loud and clear is that you feel very strongly that people should give you money.

And there it stands. For some reason, he dropped out of the conversation at that point. Not to worry; I’m sure in another week or two he’ll be back posting another ad seeking people to pay him to maybe consider their movie for his website no one visits.

Are there any lessons we can draw from this whole unfortunate experience? Nothing new, really; but it’s good to remind ourselves of some of the fundamentals that RL3 ignored.

1) You can’t go into business with nothing.

Sorry; you just can’t. Just because you want something very badly doesn’t mean you get it (a lesson you should have learned when your age was in single digits). You have to have at least some resources.

You need something to sell, and you need to let people know that you’re selling that thing. You have to be able to afford both of those things, or you can’t afford to be in business. Sorry. Capitalism sucks sometimes, don’t it?

If you want to be in the business of distributing movies via your website to your customers, then you need a catalogue of movies that your customers want to watch. If you can’t afford a catalogue of movies, then you can’t afford to be in business.

You also need a promotional campaign. Just because you have a business venture doesn’t mean you automatically have customers. When you start the venture, of course, nobody has heard about it. You have to tell them about it! You have to promote your business everywhere your customers gather. You have to be known, or at least easily findable, when your potential customers are looking for what you offer.

If you are an Unfinanced Wantrepreneur (and / or just ignorant, lazy, and entitled, like RL3 here), you cannot do these things. And so you will not succeed.

2) An idea is nothing.

You may feel that your Totally Original Idea is worth a million bucks. Or even worse, you may feel that your “vision” is priceless. You are wrong on both counts.

Your idea plus five bucks is worth one cheap beer.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. They’re a dime a hundred. Everone has ideas, all the time. There’s nothing special about that.

Implementation is what matters. Turning ideas that exist only in your head into things that exist in the real world is what matters. Instead of just sitting around saying, “Somebody should do something,” you’re the person who does something.

“I want to make money by hosting movies on a website,” is not a plan; it is a dream. At best, it is a goal. Now you need a plan. And it’s going to take work to make that plan.

3) You have to actually do the work

Even if you draft a plan and collect the resources, all you have so far is a pile of miscellaneous crap. To turn that into a functioning, revenue-generating business is going to take effort. It will take work. And guess you is going to do that work? That’s right: you are!

If this is a deal-breaker for you, then you have so fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be in business that it’s far, far better for everyone, including you, if you quit right now. You have neither the brains nor the guts to be in business. It’s better you know this about yourself before you waste your time and others’.

But if you’re not an entitled, lazy fuck then you realize that starting a business is going to require work, and somebody to do that work, and that somebody is you.

RL3 could have started off slowly and built his business with his spare time and resources. Maybe when he got home from his $3,000-a-day job, instead of firing up the ol’ Xbox or playing with his website design some more, he could seek out and watch some indie creator’s undistributed movie.

It would take two hours for him to watch a 100-minute movie, decide if he thinks it’s appropriate for his website, and fire off an email to the creator either accepting or rejecting the movie. Surely you can invest two hours of your time in your own business, RL3? Even if you’re not getting paid? As an investment in your own future?

At this rate, how long will it take to build up a catalogue of movies? Well, it’ll take a while. Did anyone think being an independent movie distributor was a get-rich-quick scheme? Sorry to disillusion you.

4) You have to do the right work

I often say: Any project is 50 percent setting it up, 10 percent doing it, and 40 percent cleaning up after it. Amateurs want to do only that fun 10 percent, and that is why their work is not as good as professionals’ work.

One common characteristic of Unfinanced Wantrepreneurs is that they spend all their time on the fun parts of the business, and neglect the necessary drudge parts. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the drudge parts don’t need to be done. What it usually means is that nobody does them, and the venture fails for reasons the Unfinanced Wantrepreneur never quite understands (probably the stupid audience’s fault, or maybe the haters who are jealous).

There’s a simple test for whether you’re doing the right work for your business — and it’s not, “Am I having fun?” It’s great if you’re having fun, but nobody cares, nor should they. Ask yourself, “What is the thing I can do right now that will best move my project toward my goal?”

RL3 spent more than a year tweaking and re-tweaking his website. He spent no time at all raising funds for his business, finding movies to offer viewers, or attracting an audience for his website. He also spent no time figuring out how he would accomplish those things. Where are the movies going to come from? He doesn’t know. Where are the viewers going to come from? He doesn’t know. Where is the money going to come from? He doesn’t know. He just likes playing with his website. He is doing the wrong work.

5) You’re going to lose money at first

Because events happen through time, there will be a period where your business is spending money but not yet making money. This is completely expected. But it is a perilous time for many businesses.

The number-one reason a business fails is under-capitalisation. You don’t have enough money to sustain the business until it starts generating its own income. Expenses mount up, the money isn’t there, and your business goes belly-up.

This is not unfair or a conspiracy against you. This is actually capitalism working as it should, where uneconomic enterprises do not survive the test of the marketplace. If you want to be in business, you agree to play by these rules.

How much money do you need to save up to survive this period? Probably more than you think! Your business plan will tell you. Oh, you don’t have a business plan? Well, then you have some work to do before you launch your business, don’t you? — work that nobody else is going to pay you for.

And you will save up some money, won’t you? Because that takes us back to Lesson 1 above.