Videos for local businesses?

[GordonJ]

Originally Posted by Marcia Yudkin

My friend Anne is seeing her income dwindle because of the economy and I am helping her come up with money making ideas.

She has top-notch video skills and tremendous contacts with local businesses. Anyone have any success stories or specific ideas for her for generating a nice moonlighting income quickly from that combination?

Thanks,
Marcia Yudkin

I'm going to toss em at you...and let your friend mull em over, OK?

First thing...she's losing commission which means her employer is losing sales...HOW can she help her employer? Most newspapers are suffering from AD revenue drops...so she can borrow from some that have added video to their ADVERTISING offers:

So www.ohio.com home of the Akron Beacon Journal and here is a link to their VIDEO cars for sale:

http://autos.ohio.com/

Someone has to take those videos. See also the HOMES link and you'll find videos being shot for those to...as ADS for the ABJ. They seem to be ahead of the curve on recouping ad dollars.

So, she can pitch the job to her employer, get a "production" fee built into the ad cost and call upon her same customers to kick it off.

Those advertisers are cutting back, but they still would LIKE to get and more important KEEP the customers they have...so, and borrowing from Mr. Alm again...

She can create a "BEST BUYS OF THE MONTH FOR MONTPELIER" for example. And feature ONE type of business that is offering or would be willing to offer a substantial either discount or a bonus or whatever...and she could get X number of these, say 50 or so, 1.5 or 1.25 per day if she can do that amount...And each location can also either Sell these for a buck or two or give them to their customers...and even the newspaper can offer the video discount of the month.

This gives the advertisers a longer opportunity to build their case for their products, could give the newspaper another ad revenue source.

Then there is twisting that into one of these:

She should daily shoot some video, of common things. At the end of a year she will have enough stock footage to offer to other video people. In New England, she could specialize on the changing of the seasons, for example. That's hardly quick however.

Now for chattel (hey, I can't help myself). Marcia, there are large dollar pieces of chattel being sold in your area, for example, RV's have hit a lull, but people are still trying to sell them...she could charge a decent sum of money, perhaps a couple of hundred dollars even, and offer to create DVD's for people selling their RV's (or Kubotas even)...and of course the REAL estate too.

The chattel opportunities are QUICK. Here's a today post from VT craiglist: http://burlington.craigslist.org/grd/719780115.html

for a 9000 Kubota...the pics are OK, but if this guy had a YOUTUBE video of this thing working and running and allowing potential buyers to see the hours, then she might get 150 dollars for her 2 hours of work. When someone is selling a 9k to 100k RV or piece of equipment, a couple of hundred bux is not hard to extract from them.

There is a 29,000 log skidder in the same section (farm). See?

She can spend an hour or two with her two nearest craigslist PLACES and find tons of high priced chattel that is waiting to be videotaped.

She could put the 25,000 pizza shop for sale in Wiliston VT on YouTube and run an ad online too at one of the many biz for sale sites. She can test it out by calling upon some of her old customers and discuss strategy with them.

When it has to be quick, in my opinion, nothing beats chatteling. I'm sure there are people in her neck of the woods that have stuff for sale, and it doesn't have to be "garage" sale junk (as I've been accused of looking for)...it could be that 85,000 RV that was housed in the garage.

Also, don't forget local High Schools, dance studios, ski resorts (in season of course), recreation centers, golf events, where people might be willing to buy a "souvenir" of the event, and even some REUNIONS too.

OK, that's my 2 cents as promised.

Gordon Jay Alexander