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Often, when I’m speak­ing to groups of video­g­ra­phers about what I do — pro­duc­ing spe­cial inter­est videos (SIVs) — they get stuck at “what should I pro­duce?” I under­stand this ques­tion, but I can’t relate to it.

Yes, you do have to choose intel­li­gently so that your project has a good chance of being prof­itable, and I talk about how to do that in my DVD “Make Money Sell­ing Your Own Videos.” That is a very impor­tant aspect of the SIV busi­ness and I’ll be writ­ing more arti­cles about it soon. In all hon­esty, my deci­sions are based on research, expe­ri­ence and blind faith. I keep my pro­duc­tion bud­gets low, my expec­ta­tions real­is­tic and my eyes and ears open to feed­back from the mar­ket­place in order to max­i­mize returns from my video productions.

The sub­ject of this arti­cle, how­ever is how to get ideas for poten­tial projects, which has always been too easy for me. In fact, I drive myself crazy with so many projects on my plate that I get over­whelmed. Ideas for videos seem to just come out of the wood­work for me. The major­ity never come to fruition once they work their way through the fil­ter­ing sys­tem, which is as it should be, but enough do pass the tests to get to the pro­duc­tion stage.

Let me tell you how it hap­pens for me.

The other day I posted my gui­tar for sale on Craigslist. One inter­ested poten­tial buyer was a man who makes fine hand­made acoustic gui­tars but who recently felt the strong pull to take up elec­tric gui­tar. Now he may not decide to buy my gui­tar but when he found out what I do for a busi­ness, the wheels started turn­ing in both of our heads. The projects we ban­tered around were a video on how to set up a gui­tar (adjust­ing string, pickup and nut height; adjust­ing the into­na­tion, etc.). These are all things a seri­ous gui­tar player should know in order to take care of their instru­ment, so the poten­tial mar­ket is quite large.

Par­ties are a rich source of project ideas. At one gath­er­ing I met a yoga instruc­tor. Now yoga videos abound, so I would not pur­sue a generic yoga topic, but she has a unique spe­cialty of heal­ing injuries with yoga. Now that is a spe­cific niche that sets this idea apart from the sea of yoga videos out there.

At another party I was telling a land­scaper friend of mine about the video I’m pro­duc­ing on grow­ing cacti and suc­cu­lents. He said he was doing a com­plete new land­scape instal­la­tion with suc­cu­lents. I thought, “Hummm, I’ll bet a video on land­scap­ing with suc­cu­lents would go over well, espe­cially since out west where I live there is a water short­age and peo­ple are encour­aged to land­scape with drought tol­er­ant plants.” So that’s another idea on my plate.

These are just a few exam­ples of how I win­now out ideas. For me to con­sider an idea it has to be unique, but fit into a well defined niche. I need the abil­ity to clearly iden­tify the mar­ket and have a means of reach­ing them with mar­ket­ing and pub­lic­ity efforts, at a rea­son­able cost

Look around you. What is in the news, on tele­vi­sion, in every­day con­ver­sa­tion? The price of gaso­line is chang­ing the world econ­omy. Peo­ple are look­ing for alter­na­tive fuels and ways to reduce the amount of fuel they use. Peo­ple are con­cerned about global warm­ing and their own car­bon foot­print. Many peo­ple are look­ing for ways to be “green,” whether that is buy­ing local food or com­post­ing the yard clip­pings. These are all strong trends that are ripe with unlim­ited poten­tial top­ics for videos.

A key piece of advice I share and adhere to myself is to pick a topic you per­son­ally care about. If you are inter­ested in the topic you will have more moti­va­tion to stay the course through script devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion and mar­ket­ing. Mar­ket­ing is an ongo­ing aspect of this busi­ness, and if you enjoy the topic then your inter­est will open many doors. You’ll read related mag­a­zines, join and post to online forums, attend and exhibit at trade shows, speak at con­fer­ences, meet the movers and shak­ers in that industry.

And yes I do enjoy grow­ing suc­cu­lents, I’m inter­ested in heal­ing with yoga and I’m far too inter­ested in gui­tars for my own good. I’m inter­ested in pro­duc­ing mul­ti­ple titles in these areas, and I’m def­i­nitely open to pro­duc­ing top­ics that help the envi­ron­ment. I’ve learned from expe­ri­ence that I have to enjoy the topic to really engage with the project.

A lot of how I’d sum up my approach is to develop a way of lis­ten­ing to peo­ple and the media in terms of “could I make a sal­able video out of that, and why would I want to?” If you have inter­est in the sub­ject, can define you topic fairly pre­cisely and iden­tify the tar­get mar­ket, then you’re on the right track. Your next step is to do some research to deter­mine the poten­tial demand for the pro­posed video and find out what the com­pe­ti­tion is like.

I’m just get­ting into this social net­work­ing, which I think will have an increas­ingly pow­er­ful cul­tural and social impact. I don’t know exactly how it will work for me but if you are read­ing this and want to see my pro­file on Face­book click here and/or on my LinkedIn net­work, click here.

Watch for future arti­cles on doing research before tak­ing that final plunge, and many arti­cles on mar­ket­ing, social net­work­ing and the specifics of pro­duc­ing spe­cial inter­est videos.

That’s it for now. I’ve gotta get busy pro­duc­ing my new topics.

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