The other day a friend of mine stopped by to drop off a few tools he had borrowed (about a year ago). He told me he wanted to start a little business online…something to do with web video. He wanted to know what…specifically…he should make videos about.
It’s a question I get…a lot.
The easy answer would have been “you can make web videos about anything, just start brainstorming”. Instead, I gave him an answer that was a little more specific.
The answer? Books.
Basically any book (I’m not talking about “story” type books here) can be made into video…and usually the results are much better. Take for example books about yoga, gardening, cooking, self-help, business, computers and the list goes on (a quick look at Amazon shows over 50,000 book titles in the Crafts & Hobbies section alone).
All of those topics, and topics like them, can be produced into videos that do a much better job of demonstrating the topic than words can alone. And people will pay for them. Gladly.
But let’s take this whole book thing a little further. A school system in Scotland has shown that…with a little creative thinking…you can further blend books and video together.
You see, this school system has created virtual teachers, of sorts. No, that doesn’t mean the kids get to stay home and watch their teachers over the web. Rather, the teacher’s provide videos, available over the web, that recap key points from lessons to help the kids with homework.
As the parent of a 4th grader, who’s often baffled by my own son’s homework, I think this is an ingenious idea. Apparently I’m not alone, as early trials (using a Biology class) showed that grades rose by 30%.
But the bigger point is that, again, anything that can be taught in books can be improved upon with video. And by adding just a little creative thinking into the mix, you can create entirely new markets (rather than chasing after existing markets, like nearly everyone else online).
After all, when was the last time you found yourself following written instructions for something…and just wishing there was a video that showed you how to do it instead? Whatever those instructions were about, a market…willing to spend money…is either already there or waiting to be created.
Great post, Dave. What is the best way to sell your videos… membership website, DVD, something else?
It depends on what the videos are about.
For example, if you’re showing them how to setup a blog, that would be a membership site type video…where the video is delivered online, via instant access (people don’t like to wait).
On the other hand, if you’re doing videos on how to do yoga, that would be better suited to DVD (since people will likely be doing yoga while watching the video).
Providing videos online, with instant access, through a membership style site gives you the ability to deploy the videos quickly and change things as often as you want. But there are technical hurdles.
Doing DVD’s eliminates the technical hurdles (for the most part), but you’re stuck with what you got, and any changes you want to make in the future must be burned to new DVD’s, redistributed, etc.
Again, using the examples above, something of a technical nature like setting up a blog (where technology can change frequently) would best be done as online video. And something evergreen (rarely changes), like a yoga course, can go to DVD.
As far as the price you can charge for online vs. DVD, there’s really no difference in my experience.
Dave, you caught me off guard with this great idea. This fits into what I do best. Are you recommending going outside your market and adding video, such as screen capture, to make video out of books? I would love to have a more specific example.
Great advise.
how do I change this brutal avatar?
On the avatar, that’s pulled directly from your account at Gravatar.com…you can change it there.
On the videos, I was saying you want to take something that’s being explained through text and demonstrate it with video instead.
For example, if the topic is knitting, you have videos of a person demonstrating how to knit a scarf or whatever. If the topic was how to install, configure and run an online forum, you would use screen capture videos to demonstrate everything. In other words, the video format (live vs. screen capture) should match the topic.
I also meant that with some creative thinking, you can create new markets or piggyback off of existing ones.
For example, there are lots of cookbooks and lots of cooking shows. There are also a lot of George Foreman Grills sold. Enter creative thinking. Why not videos, demonstrating recipes, specifically for the George Foreman grill?
Maybe not the best example, but I hope it illustrates the point.