What Is A Special Interest Video?
What are Special Interest Videos and what makes them different from other media?
Chances are you have watched your fair share of these types of videos. Do you enjoy watching the History Channel, The Learning Channel or The Science Channel? The shows on these channels are special interest videos. You may even have a few in your video library at home. They are basically videos made to educate, entertain or Inspire.
A special interest video is more accurately called a "non-fiction" video, since the common thread is that these are all non-fiction - a category long recognized in the book publishing industry. The non-fiction business covers a broad area which overlaps publishing, television, movies and education.
These videos can be about any subject. You don't even need to use a video camera to make them! Videos can be recorded webinars, animated slide shows, tutorials made with software programs such as Camtasia (PC) or StreamFlow (Mac).Here is a brief list of some types of non-fiction (special interest) videos you will find:
Exercise
Sports
Training
Kidvid
Dance
"Edu"-tainment
Documentary
Education
Tutorials
Safety
Professional
Development
Personal
Development
Formats of SIV Productions
• Taped Seminars or Workshops
• "Follow Along " Demonstrations (On-camera or VO narrator)
• Scripted Presentations - Educational, Entertainment
Documentary
• "Camtasia" style screen capture videos.
Often, production quality is secondary to content.
These types of videos make ideal products for selling on the internet. You can set up a "store" and start selling all over the world very quickly.
The web has leveled the playing field,
The web now provides a marketing avenue that allows small players to enter the game along side larger players.
(Rick) Again when I sold educational products, it was all done direct mail and via catalogs. While these are still powerful vehicles (more on offline marketing to come), I don't need to do that to get my video out there selling. Also with the new technology, your customer can even get the video almost instantaneous through digital downloads with the only limitation being their computer and internet provider.
We have introduced a few of our products this way and really look forward to this avenue of delivery. It seems to us to be a win-win situation (well, except maybe for the post office). You can deliver DVDs at a lower price point which will appeal to more customers. Your costs are minimal and you don't have to physically send them anything.
You can be on that sailboat in the Bahamas and still be selling videos and the money going directly into your bank account! (That's why I use a Caribbean image on a lot of these pages, and I do go to the Caribbean about once a year and come home to find I've made money while I sipped pina coladas on a beach.)
The Internet lowers the barriers to publishing enough so the average person can do it.It is also a good idea to get your videos into the hands of larger distribution channels and in many instances, the hurdles faced for producing a video and getting it out there selling are much lower than those faced in book publishing. More often than not, they are much quicker to produce than a book, and they are easily and inexpensively manufactured and packaged.
Even with the advent of self-publishing, getting a book published is still a fairly expensive prospect. To get the final price point low enough to compete with similar books and turn a profit, you may need to print thousands of them - before you even know if you will sell even one at that price. But that isn't the big hurdle we found.
If you do self-publish, getting your book into large, and even small, bookstores is challenging since these stores usually exclusively buy from on or two large companies such as Ingram and Baker & Taylor. On the other hand, there are large video publishing houses and distribution companies in particular niches that are always on the lookout for new video titles to sell through their catalogs from all sources.
Last year we sent two new titles to one of the big companies servicing the educational market (Insight-Media) and now our titles show up in their catalog. At the same time we have still to get our self-publiished book from a previously published best selling author, in Barnes and Noble, Borders and a myriad of small bookstores where we know they would sell well because Ingram and Baker & Taylor haven't accepted it yet.
Need More Reason Why We Love To Produce These Types Of Videos?
It’s easy to cover a subject
For a non-writer especially, producing a video can be done much more quickly than writing and publishing a book. Of course depending on your topic and approach, some productions will entail writing a script, planning a shooting schedule, lining up "talent", narrators, staff and locations.
However, many people are selling videos now where they just set their camera up, shot something, made it available as a product and started selling it in one day. (You can get an eBook out there that quickly too but if you are like many individuals, it is much easier to explain and show something than to write it all out and find photographs to illustrate it.)
These do not have to be Hollywood or big budget productions to sell well. They do need to impart valuable information your market wants to know however.
Still want to deliver something written? Have it transcribed you have another separate product for sale - as a bonus or stand alone.
The equipment has become very affordable
(Rick) When I worked at a university video department, we had expensive cameras that cost as much as $60,000 and the latest editing system at the time that set us back to the tune of over $200,000. Now you can pick up an HD flip cam for under $200 and use FREE editing software to produce a video.
One caveat to note though...
As a result of these low barriers, the Web is now inundated with free videos. Now this may seem deflating but we've discovered that people will still pay for videos that really teach them something. Many of these free videos don't even touch the surface of knowledge and people know that to gain access to good information, the giver needs to make it worth his/her while, i.e., get paid. So paid video will still be a key player.
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