We've never done custom vids, mostly because we didn't have the time but also because we're not very good at catering to what other people want to see - we cater to what we want to do
. We have always thought of it as a pretty easy way to make an extra couple hundred dollars a pop, though. We've never sold panties (mostly because i just don't get that particular fetish! yuk!).
We've sold VHS, CDs and DVDs and they've done really well for us on the site for the last however many years. The expense in handling distribution yourself comes mostly from time spent dubbing (minimal), inserting (a little longer) and addressing (the most time consuming part of the deal). We haven't made the volume of sales to make in-house duplication cost prohibitive.
I'd definitely suggest doing it if you have the material and know how to put it together. Even if sales aren't astronomical, every little bit helps, right?
And now we've just signed a distribution deal with the same company that does Shane's videos, so we're expecting our DVD/VHS sales to really take off, for the first time with out-of-house production.
We've done our sales through our merchant account and our late, lamented paypal account. We've had a merchant account since 1997, and even back then everyone was saying how hard it was to get a merchant account - we never had any problems getting it or maintaining it - then or now. In fact it was probably one of the simplest business accounts I've ever set up!
We got our account through First Bank of Beverly Hills, which is now IPayment, Inc. Our online processor/shopping cart is run through MerchantPartners.com
I'm pretty sure I heard a rumor a while back that IBill was going to process payments for tangible product again, so you might want to look into that, too.
Oasis