How to Produce an Expert Video When You’re Not an Expert
By Paul Lawrence
A few years ago, I suffered from terrible back pain. It was so bad that I was taking steroid injections and trying every other pain-relieving method I could find. Looking online, I discovered that millions of others were going through the same ordeal. That’s when I had a brainstorm: If I could find a way to rid myself of my own back pain… maybe I could create a little side business by helping other people get relief at the same time.
How was I going to do that? I had no idea.
Then one night I was talking to an acquaintance, Jamie K., about my back. It turned out that Jamie was a certified physical trainer - and she had some stretching techniques that she was sure would help me. She taught me a few of her stretches on the spot, and it felt good. After performing those stretches for just a few weeks, I felt noticeably better. And after a few months, I felt better than I had in years.
A light bulb went off in my head. I would produce an instructional video to help people use stretching to ease their back pain!
I’d already produced a successful ballroom dance instruction video, so I had experience doing it. And that video was pretty easy for me to make. After all, I’d been a dance teacher for years, so I was qualified to teach the material myself. I was totally unqualified to teach others how to do stretching exercises - but Jamie was the perfect person to do it.
That was the first instructional video where I hired an outside expert to be on camera. It turned out to be a bonanza that profited me over $5,000 within 48 hours of putting out my first ad. Three years later, I still regularly fill orders for that video.
Realizing I could use outside experts in my instructional videos opened up a whole new world of opportunity. I no longer had to stick with skills I was personally adept at.
My next video featured a very fit senior who had created his own exercise program for middle-aged and older men. That video brought in over $30,000 in 30 days.
Now you might think it costs an arm and a leg to hire an expert to star in your videos. Sure, if you asked Tiger Woods to star in a golfing video for you, you’d need to shell out big-time. But it can be surprisingly inexpensive. For instance, I paid Jamie only $100 to do the back-stretching video.
The instructional video business is an easy and fun way to make extra income. There’s a demand for how-to videos in just about every area of interest. So the opportunity to make money is practically unlimited - especially when you realize you don’t have to star in your videos yourself.
Here are some guidelines to help you…
Choose a subject that you believe will fill a need in the marketplace.
Like I said, there’s a demand for videos in almost every area of interest. Just be sure the market isn’t too obscure. Let’s say you want to produce a video teaching people how to do magic tricks. Based on the fact that there are plenty of books and videos on the subject, you could guess that the market would be large enough for you to earn a reasonable profit. On the other hand, a video that teaches people how to identify the nest of the North American Spotted Owl would appeal to too small a market. You might find a handful of customers, but not enough to make the venture worthwhile.
Figure out what you’re going to pay your expert.
When I was working with Jamie, she was employed by a spa where she made $15 an hour. I offered her $25 an hour for the time it took to shoot the video, which made her quite happy. But if, for example, you wanted to hire a lawyer to be your expert, you’d probably need to pay quite a bit more.
You can also go the royalty route by offering your expert a low upfront payment as well as a percentage of the video’s sales. This is often the better deal for both sides. It keeps your out-of-pocket costs down, and eases any worries he may have that he’ll get a piddling amount for his time… and then your video will wind up selling 100,000 copies.
I’ve found that offering a royalty of something like $1 per sale is usually well received. Even if your video ends up selling only 500 or 1,000 copies, your expert would still be getting a pretty good deal for a few hours’ work.
Recruit your expert.
I’ve had a good deal of success advertising on Craig’s List for a variety of different experts. Those who responded to my ads were all well-qualified and willing to work for a reasonable fee.
You can also find experts in special-interest chat rooms on the Internet, via local newspaper classifieds, or sometimes through simple word of mouth.
Get an agreement in writing.
I’m not an attorney, so I’m not able to offer you legal advice. But I can tell you that having a contract in writing is a good way to protect yourself and your experts. In my contracts, I always spell out very clearly what the compensation will be. In fact, I write in big, bold letters that this is the only compensation the expert will be getting and that no other promises have been made. My agreements also include a statement that says I own the full rights to the video, and can do whatever I please with it. And I include a clause that says I’m allowed to use the expert’s image, name, and material in any way I choose to promote the video.
You can find templates for contracts in the library or online that you can adapt to your purposes. But if you want to be sure you are fully covered, you should consider having an attorney write up a contract for you. Yes, this may cost a pretty penny. But you can use the same basic contract for every expert, so the cost won’t be that great in the long run.
Producing specialty videos is one of the best low-capital businesses you can get into. And by using outside experts, there is almost no limit to the number of subjects or markets you can appeal to.
[This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.]
The Worst Self-Marketing Strategy Ever Devised… and Why It Fails So Spectacularly
By Bob Bly
Many years ago, I taught a class at the Learning Annex in New York City on how to make a six-figure income as a freelancer. One student, JR, wanted to break into writing TV commercials for Madison Avenue, and he had devised what was (according to him) a brilliant self-marketing strategy for getting hired.
In actuality, it was the second-worst self-marketing idea I’d ever heard in my life.
JR told the class that he had written some “brilliant” TV commercials.
The Super Bowl was only a few weeks away at the time. JR’s strategy was to show up at the offices of Madison Avenue’s biggest ad agency and show the copy for his commercials to the creative director.
The creative director, he reasoned, was under tremendous pressure to produce great Super Bowl commercials for the agency’s clients. By bringing those great commercials with him, JR would save the day - and be hired at an enormous salary.
This was a terrible idea for all the obvious reasons:
All the commercials for the Super Bowl had been written and shot months earlier.
The creative director had never heard of JR. She didn’t know who JR was or whether he had any qualifications or talent. So the chances of her agreeing to see him were miniscule to none.
JR had no idea which of the agency’s clients were going to be running Super Bowl spots. Even if he did know, he hadn’t been briefed on the product positioning or the campaign strategy… so how could he possibly write commercials that achieved the clients’ marketing objectives?
I gently told JR - and the rest of the class - that doing work on spec for a client who hasn’t asked you to do so is an absolute waste of time. However, stupid as it is, there is a self-marketing strategy that’s even worse: giving an unsolicited critique of something a potential client has done - a new product design, an ad campaign, a website - in the hopes of being hired to fix it.
Why is giving an unsolicited critique even worse than doing unsolicited work on spec? Well, think about it.
You send a letter to a business telling them their website stinks… or their customer service people are idiots… or their product is lousy. There’s a good chance that the recipient of your letter is the person responsible for approving that website, training the customer service staff, or designing the product.
So right away, you have begun the relationship by insulting them - saying, in effect, “You don’t know what you are doing.”
They probably don’t agree that they’ve done a bad job… or else they wouldn’t have produced the site, training, or product in the first place. You come along and give a contrary opinion - highly critical and negative. They think, “Who the heck are YOU, bub? Why should I listen to what YOU say?”
As they see it, your opinion is self-serving: You are a vendor, so your objective in reaching out to them is to get them to hire you. Worse, here you are, spending your time reviewing websites, calling companies that aren’t your clients, and telling them how bad their sites are - without being paid to do so.
This causes them to think that if you were really any good at what you do, you’d be swamped with projects - and not cold calling strangers trying to rustle up work.
I’ve frequently been on the receiving end of this “You’re doing it all wrong and I can help you fix it” strategy - especially from Web designers. And speaking as a prospect, I can tell you it not only doesn’t work with me, it’s also annoying and offensive.
Just last week, I got yet another such call from a Web designer.
“I was looking at your site and it really is poorly designed,” TN, the Web designer, told me. “I would love to help you improve its performance.”
“Do you know my marketing objective for my website?” I asked TN.
“Uh, no,” he admitted.
“Well, TN,” I said. “If you don’t know what I want the site to do for my business… and you don’t know its current performance metrics… how can you possibly know that you can improve it?”
I let him stutter and stammer for a few seconds, before politely ending the call.
My friend RA, who once ran a mail-order business selling information products for gamblers, was also a victim of the “You’re doing it all wrong and I can help you fix it” gambit.
SH, a newbie freelance copywriter, wrote RA an unsolicited two-page critique of his latest direct-marketing package. SH closed his letter by suggesting to RA that his marketing results would be greatly improved by letting a “professional copywriter” (like SA) work his magic on it.
RA and I both had a good laugh over this… because RA is universally acknowledged (except by SH, who didn’t recognize his name) as one of today’s top direct-response copywriters.
Irritated, RA sent SH a testy letter pointing out this fact… and noting that the package SH thought was so terrible was, in fact, a blockbuster control. Which made SH look stupid and silly.
Conclusion: Doing a critique OR work on spec for a potential client who has not asked for it seems, on the surface, a sensible approach to marketing your professional or technical services. But it is not.
My advice:
- Never give unsolicited advice or criticism.
- Don’t offer solutions until you really know what the problem is - and the only way you can really understand the problem is for the potential client to tell you.
- If you want to show the potential client how smart you are, stop pontificating. Instead, ask intelligent questions and listen to the answers.
[Ed Note: Bob Bly is a freelance copywriter, the author of more than 70 books, and co-creator of ETR’s Direct Marketing Masters Edition program. Sign up for Bob’s free monthly e-zine, The Direct Response Letter, and get more than $100 in free bonuses.
This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.]