Secrets of Producing and Selling Successful Videos [Paperback]

Hal Landen (Author), Kay Harrison (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2007

There has never been a better time to produce and sell your own videos. The market for DVDs is expected to reach $49 billion by 2010 and this doesn't even include the explosion of web video. This book will help you bootstrap your own video publishing business without investors or loans. Discover how others with no equipment or video experience have published successful videos series, not just single videos. But if you are a video producer, you'll discover that special interest videos are a perfect sideline that can overcome the limitations of the video service business. Unlike the production business, the special interest video business lets you multiply your profits and sell products around the world from the comfort of your home. The Internet gives you amazing leverage. For pennies a day you can have your own storefront that sells your line of videos 24/7. Or you can have others do it all for you and send you monthly checks. Learn how to choose a profitable genre and find a devoted audience for your video -- a skill that can make or break your video business before you even start. See how a smart publicity campaign can get your video reviewed in all the right places. Just one good review can bring in $100,000s in sales. Don't re-invent the wheel. Discover the proven business models for publishing successful videos.

Editorial Reviews

Review

If you want to make money making videos, here are the secrets, all nicely organized, by someone who has clearly walked the talk and taken good notes at every step. Plus, numerous references to other information sources point the way to more detail. It s a amazing amount of information, made remarkably clear, ranging from how to set up lighting to setting up a merchant credit card account for your website. Landen is truly a digital era Renaissance guy, which means that this is practical advice you can follow to real results. But rather than expecting you to also be the jack of all trades, he also includes tips on how to find others to partner with and help you at every step. Whether you re a video expert looking for a subject, a subject expert looking to market your expertise, or you just want to get a direct-response business of any type going, this is the book for you. There s so much breath and depth here that anyone in the video business, or the knowledge business, needs this one on their shelf. You ll be going back to it often for good ideas and essential reference information. --John Morley, author Scriptwriting for High-Impact Videos

I read it cover-to-cover in one day - it s that good. I learned what I can do myself, and what is best outsourced to experts, and how to access those experts locally. The list of contacts in the Appendix is worth the price of the book alone. --Barbra Sundquist, Mentor Coach

About the Author

Hal Landen brings over 25 years of experience in the non-fiction film and video business to this book. He is the author of books and videos about the video business. He founded VideoUniversity.com which Forbes Magazine calls one of the best business-to-business web sites for digital video production. He has freelanced for ABC's 20/20, CBS's 60 Minutes, QVC and many others.

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Oak Tree Press; 1st edition (March 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1888093129
• ISBN-13: 978-1888093124
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,367,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A ton of up to date info and no hype, September 3, 2007

By 

Stuart Sweetow "sweetow" (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Secrets of Producing and Selling Successful Videos (Paperback)

This is not one of those get rich quick type of books. It methodically shows you the slow but steady way to produce and market special interest DVDs to the buying public. Special interest DVDs include instructional, sports, travel, health, children's videos and other non-fiction DVDs.

Landen founded www.videouniversity.com and was a camera operator for 60 Minutes, 20/20 and QVC. He knows the business and has opened his vault to share his treasured secrets.

You'll learn which video topics sell well and which don't. He includes chapters on scriptwriting and producing. Chapters are devoted to budgeting, marketing, legal issues, working with distributors and mail order.

Landen has insights into the video publishing business, and he profiles a variety of successful producers from Ken Burns of PBS fame to Fred Levine, a videographer working out of his mobile home who made the first road construction video for children.

The 40-page appendix alone is worth the price. Here Landen shares his secret Google Adwords, he explains how to get public domain footage, he lists the major distributors; and he even includes release forms and FTC guidelines for testimonials.

I am in the video production business, and I have seen many entrepreneurs lose their shirts by producing a video that they could not sell. If you are willing to invest the time and energy to earn residual income for your videos, then this is the book to get

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must-have" primer for anyone contemplating producing and selling their own videos for profit, August 6, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secrets of Producing and Selling Successful Videos (Paperback)

Author Hal Landen, a film and video businessman of 25 years' experience, shares his hard-earned wisdom in Secrets of Producing & Selling Successful Videos: How to Make Money with DVDs and Streaming Video. Chapters address the core qualities of successful producers, how to choose an attention-getting video topic, the basics of the video publishing business in general and the educational market in particular, the "need-to-know" lowdown on laws and contracts, how to sell on the web step by step, a crash course in running one's own mail order business, and much more. "Another type of fraud you will encounter is from people who buy your product with no intention of keeping it. These customers are abusive but be careful. Most responses you might consider, such as dropping your guarantee, will hurt your business more than help it. This is why you need a good database or invoicing program to help you find and stop such problems." A "must-have" primer for anyone contemplating producing and selling their own videos for profit, whether as a primary or side business.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Questionable bias regarding production and business, October 18, 2007

By 

Frank E. Trinkle (Shalimar, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Secrets of Producing and Selling Successful Videos (Paperback)

While the book is fairly well written; and the author clearly has a strong background in the subject matter, I found a number of things disturbing in his book.

Specifically, he is focused on larger-scale productions than the title infers... regularly referring to hiring personnel, renting equipment, and dealing with crews as a larger producer, rather than what is now common in the business as super low-budget quality production.

The most disturbing comment in the book is the encouragement to operate as a sole proprietership as a producer of videos... pooh-poohing other business structures that lend themselves to protection. He doesn't even mention LLC's (Limited Liability Corporations) that act like a sole proprietership, but offer liability protection against personal assets. The LLC has become the standard for small business operations... and even some very large businesses, yet the author completely ignores the option.

Overall, the appendices were worth the price of the book, and SOME of the material was useful, but in these days of prosumer cams and HDDV formats, the production methods proposed by the author should be reserved for the higher end of the business, not the likely purchasers of the book. In my opinion, he does not fully address his likely readers.