Getting some new jobs....

[Jim Michael]

Re restaurants, I would start with asking where people currently look when they come to town and want to find a restaurant - they often go to one of the sites like Yelp and find ratings of places in the area. If there is a link to the restaurant, they'll go there and see if there is an online menu. If there is bandwidth they might watch a video. So the sales pitch would be along the lines of - here is what happens when I search here. Show them competing restaurant websites (good use of an iPad), then theirs if it exists. I think the opportunity might be in some type of comprehensive package - online menu + photos + video. The restaurant business is highly competitive so demonstrating that a competitor did a better job provides some impetus to one-up the competition.

Re the shopping center - cool idea. Any group of shops might be able to work together and each have some footage to use on their website as a standalone ad while reducing their individual expenditure.

[David Barnett]

One thing to beware of people is be careful about advising to them to put the video onto their website. By saying that, you need to factor in any costs their probable web designer will be taking by adding and embedding the code. I know it sounds like "So, just add it, it's easy", but as one who does my own web design myself it typically isn't that way (positioning can be a b*tch). First, the video may not look good right on the home page, so you'd want a seperate section and link in the navigation menu, which in itself could be a problem if the nav bar is set to a position filling it's container or appearance across the page if horizontal, thus requiring them to reduce the size of all the nav bar options. Also you, the video creator, would probably like some sort of "Check out our Web Video" on the home page, something they'd create in Photoshop or Illustrator. Just basically dealing with it & html/CSS for them to open the clients web file would be a fee in itself. Also, some may be built with very basic templates (wix, weebly) where customization isn't so easy or the quote unqoute web designer may not know code at all, just designs using purely templates.

I'm just saying I wouldn't be out there assuring them you will give them a video for their website without considering the fact that when their web designer gets a phone call asking them to add a video section to their site they are quoted some figure you are not in control of, and when you say you can do it yourself the designer refuses to allow you access to the site or it's hosting. Just something to think about proactively.

[Silas Barker]

Jim- Great idea, I'll explore that option with Yelp and check into adding a video to the Yelp site or if its possible. Thanks!

David- Just thinking the same thing! one idea is maybe I could sell a website / video package together. Alot of businesses either don't have a website or one they are not happy with. So maybe a package deal would fix that, and I could team with a website guy, or have about 8 pre designed sites that I customize for the client.

Thanks for the tips guys!

[Mark Ahrens]

Silas,
How goes the pavement pounding?
What results or lessons have you learned?

I'm about to do the same . . . business is sooo slooooow.

[Silas Barker]

Here is where I am at...

Most of my work comes from craigslist and google. When someone contacts me I try to find out the budget. It seems like alot of the time I have to charge a little less then I should have too. But the economy is very hard here so I think that's the only thing you can do. Hopefully as I get more referrals I'll get better paying jobs.

My Yelp account got closed because I never use it, so I have not been able to try anything on there at all yet, I probably need to make a new account to do put any video up.

I decided not to go around showing my work on a ipad because the results I would get would probably really be low, and I do not have enough samples for all the various types of business I would like to sell to. As I increase my commercial portfolio with nice DSLR video samples (alot of my work commercial work is before DSLR, because I did weddings for many years) then I think I'll definitely have more business.

One other thing that helps is to really focus on how to help the business, not a cool video. That's been a little tough for me, but I am figuring it out. Also because I work with small businesses mostly, I am been learning how to effectively help them sell their product or service as well.

BOTTOM LINE - in a hard economy don't be afraid to give some deals out to get the jobs. Its a nice dream to be creating top notch stuff, but not every business wants or can afford it.

Also I improved my website and with google tracking was able to optimize it and know what people are interested in or not. I think its definitely helped.
In addition I got the Canon 5Diii and the 200mm 2.8 prime lens - can't wait to use it on the next job!!!