Make Money With Your Vacation Video: Turn It Into An Educational Video

One of the most intriguing ways to make money with your vacation video is to turn it into an educational product. To do this well, you’ll want to do some leg work and have a game plan before you go.

Do some research before you leave

Before you spend much time, you want to make sure you will produce a profitable video. The best way to do that is to produce one on a less documented area of a highly popular topic.

Have you ever specifically planned to go to a place or taken a tour of a destination you are really interested in and have done extensive research on only to find that when you were there, you discovered fascinating information you hadn’t known before? Not only is that really satisfying but potentially profitable. If you hadn’t found the information previous to going, most likely others with the same interest hadn’t either and would gladly pay to see a video to discover it as well. Video isn’t the only potential product you can produce.

Get permission to shoot

Make sure you have permission to shoot! Some destinations are very clear in not allowing cameras and with the internet making information readily accessible, it is easier than ever for places to uncover your work and issue you a cease and desist order. Some landmarks, like the lone cypress tree at Pebble Beach or the sculpture garden at the Getty Center are even copyright protected!

However, if you are really hot to shoot there, it doesn’t hurt to ask. We’ve done this at the Huntington Botanical Gardens. When they found out that we were working on an educational video on succulents and cacti for the school market and were working with a professor at Cal Poly, they gave us permission. With that permission, we were able to bring in a better tripod and equipment, take our time and get access to areas we wouldn’t have otherwise.

If you aren’t able to get permission, don’t despair. Put your creative thinking cap on and come up with a new angle to your story that you could do while on your trip. For example, we live near Hearst Castle in California. Not only are you not able to make commercial videos or photos of it, it’s also a pretty saturated market. However, we’ve found that people who come to this area, also love the history, the landscape, the gardens, the art, etc. Those are potential topics we could shoot that would have appeal. We could use permitted licensed footage or images as other b-roll.

If you liked this article, subscribe to the RSS feed here and don’t miss another update.

Thanks for visiting. Please share with others.

•