During a marketing meeting the other week, I decided to go back 5 years with my business plan and return to where it all began. Read on to discover why looking back over past projects can still be profitable.

During the meeting we were discussing core skills and knowledge that people have that could be made into an information product, and as such I was advising an engineer on his options and brainstorming some ideas around, when suddenly he flipped the tables on me.

He suggested to me that I develop some information products around the property development and building industry.

Now as you may know I worked in the industry for many years and indeed produced some how to DVD's of the industry. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be a good idea to remake the DVD's from scratch given that the original DVD's were produced using a consumer digital camera, no lighting to speak of and no effects.

In addition to being able to produce the DVD's using professional equipment and editing gear, I would be able to get the DVD shot, produced, edited and packaged for the retail market in a short amount of time compared with my latest product that I'm working on.

Within this business it is important to work on short attention span products that are fun to make while being profitable.

So Here's the Progress so Far

Research

The idea for the project was concieved a week ago and the first job was to research the market to find out whether people are looking for the product I want to make. What I found that there was a reasonable market for the niche with minimal competition although there were DVD's already on the market which can be a good thing.

I then researched these products on Amazon to look at the feedback and take note of any comments that have been made, then I searched Google suggest 

For more information on research see my article here

As this DVD is building and construction related I needed somewhere to film and a job to do to film, so I went to my local college's construction department. I told them what I was doing and asked then if they had any jobs that needed doing in exchange for allowing me to film, and as it happened they did! No money changed hands just a mutual arangement, just the way I like it..!

Website

Following the research I came up with a title of the DVD laden with relevant keywords, then headed over to Nameboy.com to search for a domain name.

Once I found a domain name I was happy with I registered it at GoDaddy.com, set the nameservers to my hosting company at Hostgator.com, and using their Fantastico function installed CMS website software, and optimised the site with the relevant keywords, and submitted the site to Google Yahoo and Bing.

Both the research and outline website I completed while watching a film with the family and took just a couple of hours in between making coffee and watching the film!

The next day I went to my local transfer shop and ordered a tee shirt and sweat shirt with the DVD name and website address ready for the filming.

The next couple of days I worked seriously on getting the script together using the free celtx software and storyboarded the scenes, along with the format of the DVD. By ensuring you have these elements completed will make the filming process much easier and ensure that all the shots I need get filmed and I have enough footage to produce the content in the DVD I want.

One thing note is to never under estimate the amount of research and pre-production preparation time in writing scripts, drawing storyboards, having a shooting schedule, and making sure everyone knows what to do on the day of the shoot.

The next thing I'll be doing is checking over my camera gear ready for the shoot later this week by checking the batteries, striping the digital tapes, checking the mic batteries and checking the lighting bulbs, while making contact with my cameraman and assistant. 

So Why the 'How-To' DVD Business Model?

Within the product development business DVD production can be a profitable business model for the following reasons:

1. DVD's have a high percieved value
2. Low cost to produce
3. Low cost and easy to ship