Review of Cash from Your Camcorder

Introduction

Peter Walters has been producing special interest videos (SIVs) since the late 1980s and has accrued what he considers to be a wealth of knowledge which he wishes to pass on to prospective SIV makers. Aiming firmly at niche audiences - Walters specialises in equestrianism and dog agility - this set includes 2 DVDs and a CD (not provided for review) with the following titles:

Disc 1

How to choose your market
How to find out exactly what that market wants
How to make the very DVD to satisfy those wants
How to discover your likely sales before you even begin
What subjects you should avoid
How to choose a strong title for your DVD
The "lucky 13" most powerful words to use in your titles
How to price your DVD for maximum profit
How to work with an expert or well-known personality
How to gain commercial sponsorship
Why you shouldn`t spend money on unnecessary equipment
How to create a script outline for your DVD
Where to shoot your DVD
How to use chromakey


Disc 2

Getting your DVD into major stores; yes or no?
Selling through a distributor
How to get free publicity for your DVD with press releases
Mail order: One-step ads
Mail order: Two-step ads
How to have killer sales letters written for you at minimal cost
How to use competitions to boost sales
How to sell your DVD from a dedicated website
How to automate your business with a sequential auto-responder
Creating your own simple template website
Adding online payment facilities
Using Google Adwords to drive traffic to your website
How to sell your DVD on Ebay
Selling via list brokers
How to sell to overseas markets
How to get your product to the customer once you`ve made a sale

The Resource CD apparently contains such information as templates for legal contracts, web addresses and useful contacts.

Video

The bulk of the DVDs are simply Walters sitting and talking straight to camera - by no means is he a professional presenter, more accustomed to being behind the camera and he occasionally fluffs his lines and, at one point, belches quietly into his hand! I don`t know why he didn`t edit these mistakes out or simply re-take the shot.

He demonstrates the IT aspects of marketing an SIV by focusing the camera on his computer screen and narrates what he is doing; his own IT skills seem relatively slow and basic with little use of the short cuts which are familiar to regular internet users - this makes it irritating to watch as he could be working so much faster (but he may be pacing it like this so as not to lose the audience).

Audio

The PCM stereo soundtrack is obviously the only option in his budget and the DVD suffers as a result with occasional hissing, white noise and poorly directed sound. I also found the `musical stings` which linked each segment to be excruciatingly banal, repetitive and annoying!

Conclusion

As I have never made, and have no intention of making a Special Interest Video, I found this DVD to be, quite frankly, dull and boring. The only part that gained my attention was when he said that SIVs (I assume including the DVD that he is selling for £47) are made for under £1 - as it was entirely filmed in his office and edited on his home computer, this is entirely plausible. If you have just paid out nearly £50 for this DVD, it must irk to know what a mark-up he has put on the set. But then again, if you are in the SIV market, you would know the profit margin before buying this DVD set.

As he demonstrates, the SIV market can be extremely profitable, Peter Walters says on his website:
"Suppose you made one DVD and sold only 500 copies at £37 per copy (and yes, specialised, highly-targeted DVDs can easily sell for that), then you`d make an income of £18,500 for just that one DVD. Not bad for probably no more than a couple of weekends shooting and editing."

At a retail price of £47 this DVD is likely only to appeal to those already making SIVs or wanting to turn a hobby into a profitable business, therefore you know who you are and whether you will want this DVD or not. It`s not a great DVD by any stretch of the imagination, but it does contain plenty of information that the SIV maker will find useful. You can buy it from http://www.cashfromyourcamcorder.com/.