OTHER IDEAS FOR MONEY-MAKING VIDEOCAMERA SERVICES
VIDEO YEARBOOKS
These are growing in popularity. They usually consist of short scenes of
important high school events, such as sports, clubs, candid "people scenes,"
still photo montages, and other memorable items for the students. A well-
edited hour-long video should be able to be sold for $15 to $30, depending upon
the editing complexity of the video and the size of the school. The larger the
school, the more you can expect to sell.
You should first contact the school administration with this idea. Put
together a good presentation for them, explaining your services and how your
video yearbook will work with the regular yearbook as an added remembrance. A
good idea is to offer to donate a portion, $2 for example, per DVD sold to a
school fund or student-supported charity. After the administration, you will
probably need to speak to the school board, principals, and school yearbook
sponsors. This work will be worth it, though.
Try to include in your DVD, from time to time, current events or subjects
which will remind the viewers about what was going on at the time they were in
school. One caution, though. Be careful about including copyrighted items,
such as popular songs, in your DVD. You will need to get permission from the
copyright holders or risk legal action.
The best way to sell your DVD is to obtain permission to distribute a flyer to
the students in the school at the same time as the regular yearbook information
is distributed. Then, follow up later in the year, giving those who haven't
ordered yet another opportunity. Finally, give another chance at the end of
the school year.
From time to time, go to the school and shoot material. Get sporting events,
clubs, quiz bowl tournaments, science fairs, special events, pep rallies,
ordinary day-to-day video, and, of course, graduation. If you're ambitious, do
a video yearbook for each class! That way, students can end their high school
years with a four-video set, documenting that time of their lives from start to
finish!
DUBBING AND DUPLICATING
Here's an easy service to offer. With a film-to-video transfer device,
commonly available for under $100, and a movie projector, you can put
customer's old home movies on video DVD. There are a few different types of
transfer devices available. The best place to check would be your local
quality camera shop.
You should be able to charge around $20 per hour of film for this service. A
good idea is to add background music to the home movies. Copyright-free music
is widely available on CD. Check advertising and marketing magazines such as
Advertising Age for ads.
You can also offer a duplicating service for customer's home videos, so they
can give relatives (or America's Funniest Home Videos) a copy. You can usually
charge a flat fee for this service, depending upon the length of the DVD.
Editing together still photos is also a good service to offer, particularly to
people who travel frequently.
There are many other areas just starting to be tapped -- video resumes, video
postcards, even video wills. If you come up with a good original idea,
research the market for it. If you find a reasonable amount of people will be
interested in your new service, you may just have a winner on your hands!
