Saturday, March 28, 2009

Make Money in Special Interest Video

You can do something you really enjoy doing in video and make money at it. I am talking about producing Special Interest Video. Creating and marketing SIV’s isn’t likely to make you rich, or pay off the mortgage...
...but it could.

There’s a host of genre’s in SIV. First, let’s define Special Interest Video even though most of you know, or think you know, a lot of you, myself included, totally overlook some SIV material that fits.

Special interest could also fit in the “limited” interest category. They are essentially the same: special interest videos are "limited" in the range of potential market share they can capture because not everyone will be “interested” in them; “limited” interest video is, well, limited in its range of appeal or market potential.

Either way you are creating a product that is limited to a set group of individuals who might be interested in purchasing a copy, or producing and marketing a SIV of their own. The approach opens up two markets specifically - what you might produce, and what you could produce for others. Both also work on the “work once, sell many” principle I like to operate by.

While SIV only appeal to a small part of any given market or demographic, the spread can be huge. While your market reach might be only a few hundred, today’s population and diversity of interests actually puts most “limited interest” production potential in the thousands of sales. It depends a lot on how and where you market, identifying and reaching the groups where a higher concentration of interest in your subjects exists.

Let’s take a quick look at numbers.
You love producing sunsets, live in an area where you can accumulate hundreds of dramatic sunsets over a season, put them to music (there’s a broad range of perfectly acceptable copyright-free resources, and even a host of software productions available to enable you to generate your own, as well as a host of musicians who also make video - you do not HAVE to violate copyright music laws to create these.), give your productions a title, design some nice graphics, package and offer them for sale.

This is nothing new, Reader’s Digest has produced mood, nature and other “inspirational” footage/music videos for years. Still do, so far as I know - I have a few older productions in my personal library. So does my Dad, friends, and I rarely go to any client’s home without seeing some of these in their own collections. People do buy them, folks.

Keep in mind that this is something you do because you enjoy collecting sunsets for yourself. You may, or not, be a full time professional video services provider, but you still go out and commune with nature in some way from time-to-time, collecting on video anything from flowers to animals, desert plants to nocturnal creatures, piers to plantation homes, storms to cumulus cloud patterns. Take this a step further, editing and packaging, then marketing, and you can pick up some coin for your efforts.

It starts as a labor of love, but easily becomes a SIV production. You have done the work without thought to profits, but hey, sell a couple hundred or so at $9.99 or so and you have picked up some money for your labors. The subject, and your treatment of its production hit the consumer pulse and you could literally sell thousands.

Sure, there’s a lot of competition in this arena, but you can develop your own market, and followers - consumers who after discovering your productions come back for more again, and again, and again.

But that isn’t all!
Wait, there’s more! Hundreds of hobby enthusiasts all over the world are either skilled at doing something uniquely creative, or buying SIV productions that they hope will help them pursue their particular interests, learn how to collect this, build that, or find whatever.

People collect things, enjoy history, like trains, planes or automobiles, but they also like knowing how to put together special projects, even their own SIV productions. Those who are knowledgeable about their chosen interests, able to articulate in a reasonable manner, understand the ins, outs and tricks of their creative skills need only be encouraged to enter into a mutually beneficial SIV production - one that each of you, the video producer and the talent, can put together using your particular knowledge, produce, package and market, and bring in a few dollars worth of orders from time-to-time.

SIV productions can be...
...generally appealing, wildly hot, or very specific. The marketing can be the same, from casually mentioning their availability on your general or dedicated web site, to e-mail blasts, viral marketing techniques, to full-blown advertising and direct mail campaigns.

The interesting thing about such productions is that once a few people hear about them, purchase them, express an interest in them, and tell others in their circles of influence, more people come, browse your selections, make purchases and periodically visit again, and again. You productions, or any one of them, could get hot, or not, but all you have invested in them is a little bit of effort - something you were going to do, more or less, anyway, but just carried it a step further to offer your SIV to the rest of the world.

There is a huge potential for production of how to videos, mood videos, videos that promote self-published books, entertainment, hobbies, information and awareness - the list is infinite. If you have a product and market, you will make it.

No comments: