Small Business

[J3M]

How many of you here do video editing, format conversations, etc. as a small, home business?

I'm seriously considering starting up a home based company that specializes in analog to DVD conversation. My town only has one company (for consumers, the rest are more production studio level companies) that currently does this. I'm pretty sure that I could beat their current prices.

So, if you do this yourself, what kind of things should I be prepared for and any other general tips you could give to someone starting out? Thanks!

[Devanshu]

Senior year of high school brought me a lot of money. A lot of people wanted to give friends stuff as gifts. Here's where I came in. I offered my services and turned a bunch of pictures(which were provided by the customer of course) into a slideshow w/ background music and burned them to a VCD.

As for advice, make sure you dont make your services too expensive. High prices may cost you some customers.

[J3M]

I've already started researching the market around here to find out what services are available and what they charge.

I've also started on a business plan. I'm going to start out slow though. I've already got several clients lined up. I'm going to do the work for them really cheap as I'm going to use them as testimonials (part of the deal for the cheap price). I'm working on getting more analog source devices so I can convert a broader range of material, as well as some higher end consumer hardware to produce more professional results (ie., expensive DVD printer, etc.). I'm now trying to decide if the expensive DVD authoring packages such as Adobe Encore are worh the cost compared to what I can do in much cheaper (or free) software packages.

I've even spoke with a friend of mine who is a professional graphic designer to see if she wants to help me with menus, buttons, logos, etc.. Graphics are my weak spot right now, so outsourcing that will be a must (until I get some training under my belt).

I really think there is a market for this in my town, and if not I'll create one.

[Devanshu]

Location: Indiana

Where in indy? I'm from carmel.

[Capmaster]

Check into Yahoo hosting on Geocities. They offer really cheap merchant sites with nice extras like handling Visa/MC/Discover transactions, many e-mails, lots of storage and bandwidth.

I'm thinking about doing the same thing you are in about a year when my personal situation changes and I've been putting some feelers out.

[J3M]

I'm in Southern Indiana (about as south as you can get before hitting KY).

I'm a web designer by day (large finance company) so I've already got a top notch website in the works. Payment options are a concern, as most people prefer to pay with credit/debit cards now. As I stated before, I'm in the very beginning stages of planning this. I'm researching what forms and such I need to submit to the state, which type of business is best (ie. inc., llc, etc.) and all that good stuff.

I was just hoping there were others out there already established doing this type of work that could give me some pointers. There's so little overhead in this that you can't really go wrong. Everything I will be purchasing can be used for my own personal use anyway, so even if demand is low at first, or flops altogether, I'm not really out any money.

[Capmaster]

That's why it really looks attractive to me too. There's no downside that I can see.

Well, sounds like you will be up and going before me so I can ask you for advice when I start

[Devanshu]

I'm in Southern Indiana (about as south as you can get before hitting KY).

I was just asking because I've taken some graphic design classes in high school. I'm nowhere near professional but I did well. But it looks like we're pretty far apart. I could've helped for a little cut of the profits.