How George’s video production company is making six figures in sales with Sellfy

George Edmondson is a US-based video creator and business owner known for his skills and expertise in the Final Cut Pro community. He started off making video tutorials and soon ended up selling them as digital products on Sellfy. With just three or four products, George’s video production company, Seed Creative, has been able to make thousands in sales. The success of his company also led him to work with a client that builds plugins for Final Cut Pro and Apple Motion.

George picked Sellfy for its ease of use and features like instant payouts and the ability to embed the store on his website. Read on to learn more about George’s story and the positive impact Sellfy has had on his life and business.

How would you describe yourself as a creator? What do you do?

I would describe myself as a video creator. I own a video production company called Seed Creative in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Currently, there are four of us, plus a freelancer, on the team.

The primary style of video that we create would be considered corporate, so we do a lot of safety training and marketing videos. We’ve also done feature-length documentaries. Our biggest client is a company that builds plugins for Final Cut Pro and Apple Motion. We do a lot of work with them on making marketing content as well as promotional and tutorial videos. 

So, we do a little bit of it all. The only thing that we haven’t done is any sort of narrative filmmaking, but we do create story-driven commercials and ads.

How or when did you realise you could sell digital products online?

I had just started my company when I was working in collaboration with a local videographer. He sent me a video to just let me look over it and give feedback. I told him that I loved it, but I was bothered by some screens flickering in the background. He didn’t know how to fix that, so I started messing around with it and figured out a way to create a simple effect for Final Cut Pro. 

He was amazed by the result and asked me how I did that. So I said I could package it and send it to him for future fixes. He told me that he would’ve paid for it, and the next thing I knew, I was thinking about how to market that effect and created a name for it—Seed De-Flicker. And then I came up with a price that I thought would be reasonable for what it does, and I started looking on my website. 

I didn’t have a clue how to deliver or sell the effect and just make it easy for people. So I did a little bit of research and looked at different eCommerce platforms. Sellfy was something that I saw and was immediately drawn to for some reason.

Why do you think you were drawn to Sellfy over other eCommerce platforms?

I think that it was because of the amount of time and effort I could tell it took to say, “look, we’re going to help you make this really simple to put on your website. It’s going to go straight into your PayPal account,” which is another big plus. 

There are eCommerce platforms where the money gets held in an account for a few days and then it gets sent over. But, I wanted something instant so that when I make a sale I’ve got it immediately. That was one of the reasons why I went with Sellfy and I’ve been happy ever since. I’ve never had any complaints.

It’s also very easy with Sellfy: you upload your file, make a price, link your account, and then there are the tools and you put it on your website and that’s it. I had it done in a matter of a few hours and we were ready to go.

How long have you been using Sellfy? What are your favourite features?

I think I’ve been selling digital products for around four or five years now using Sellfy. I only have three or four products.

I like that I can embed Sellfy directly to my website and that it looks like its own web page dedicated to my effects and plugins. I can have my product in multiple places. People usually come upon these effects because of the Sellfy page and not my website. So, having its own dedicated page to my effect is great. 

I also like the feature of letting my customers get in direct contact with me through my Sellfy email. So, if there are any issues, I can go in and we have direct messaging back and forth. Communication is a big deal, so I love that it’s all integrated.

And the fees are totally fine to pay for the service. We’re good with what we pay because it’s fair and it allows Sellfy to come up with better ways of doing things. I know that the Premium plan I’m paying is paying off for me. I’ve never had any issues with it and those are the features that I love.

How do you market your products and make sales?

Our product only works in Apple’s Final Cut Pro, so there are pros and cons to that. Obviously, the cons are that I can’t market to multiple people. The pros to this are that I have a decent voice within the Final Cut Pro community because I’ve done tutorials. So, people already knew who I was when I first released the product. 

I’ve done a little bit of SEO and marketing as well. On my website, I have fairly strong SEO keywords for Final Cut Pro, Flicker, and Flicker Removal. So, when people do a Google or YouTube search for something like Flicker Removal in Final Cut, it’s going to be one of the top websites that you find. People then have the option to purchase it through Sellfy or on the app store.

There’s also a website that’s like a Final Cut Pro site and they posted about it, so it has organically grown from there. I haven’t really done a lot, though. It’s been wonderful that I haven’t had to spend a lot of time, effort, or money on marketing.

How big is your income from Sellfy? What impact has it had on your life and your company?

Currently, we’re at a point where we’re into six figures in sales. I never imagined that this would happen because it was something I mostly did for fun. And, honestly, that’s what makes it even cooler to me. It has made an extreme impact on my life, my company, and my family.

The better that Sellfy is, the better the plugins and effects do, the better my company does, and the better my family’s quality of life is.

We’ve been able to buy a lot of equipment for my video production company because I’m selling digital products. We have gone on vacations fully funded by the income from these products. It has truly increased our quality of life and the opportunities that I have. I’m freer to focus on my business while I know that I have a constant flow of income that makes a big difference for my company and my family.

What else do you love about Sellfy?

I love the simplicity. I’m a businessman at the end of the day, and so all I care about is, is it fast and easy and good quality? And Sellfy checks all those boxes for me. 

I’ve never had anyone email me and say that they couldn’t get a product downloaded. Everything just works and that’s all I care about. The last thing I want to do is spend a million hours trying to navigate and figure out how to re-upload files. I don’t want to do that. I want to log on, see my analytics, talk to the people that I need to talk to, and then go about my day working on other business stuff.

What lessons have you learned along the way?

My biggest takeaway and the biggest thing that I’ve learned is that it’s absolutely easier to sell digital products than I thought it was going to be. If you have an idea and a product, there’s honestly no reason not to try it and not to use Sellfy to create another avenue for income. 

People might see our app or this effect that we’re selling and think that it’s a big, long process, but it’s not—I was selling in a matter of maybe an hour. And that was just because I was learning how to navigate around.