Marketing question for a tutorial DVD..

Innerstatejt

 Hello Guys and girls. Alot has happened since my last post several months ago. I changed my focus to something I really enjoy and am also quite good at. To back up just a little bit, I`ve been training people on music software since 1999 as one of my sources of income. After recognizing common questions and concerns I decided I could reach alot more people by putting together some training videos. At first this was just going to be for long distance training by email but I ended up with over 3 hours of very useful information. Just as an experiment I offered these up as a collection in DVD format. It was nothing special as far as packaging, simply a burned DVD with alot of great information on it (example of a lo-fi version of a video www.myspace.com/djjasontimothy on the left side).  Through use of ebay, craigslist and myspace a started getting regular orders and many people are finding my tutorials more useful and easier to follow that the company themselves puts out (just so you all are not in the dark, these videos are on a program called Ableton Live). Now these videos are technically nothing special, there are no fancy fades, no close ups etc.. these are simply full screen videos that look just like it would look if you were using the program yourself. I`ve found so far that it`s really the content people care most about. As an extra incentive to buyers, I offer all people purchasing my DVD access to every video I do in the future and make available online. This way the learning continues and the community grows.  Now this leads to a much bigger picture that I won`t get too far into, but here is the big plan... I would over the next year put together these video DVD for every music software program I am familiar with (pro tools, reason, acid, cubase..etc..). I will build a site that will host a limited amount of the videos for free as well as a ton of tutorial blogs, interviews and links and alot of free stuff. The site will make its revenue from ad`s, my own products and donations. Although if you hunted all through the internet you might be able to find some of the information I plan to have on my site, I`ve found no ONE site that has everything I want to offer in one place. ok.. so now you know the big plan....  Back to this DVD. On a small budget I would like to take this to the next level. at this time I charge $25 for the DVD  where all my competition charges around $40. I would like to keep the cost down but make it professional enough to sell on amazon as well as have a downloadable version.  Does anybody have any shoestring budget ideas for grassroots and internet marketing besides ebay, craigslist and myspace? Is there anything else I may be missing completely? At this time I am averaging 1 or 2 sales a day which is a nice little addition to my income, but I would like to get to the level where im averaging 20 sales a day and even have some days that hit into the hundreds.  I want to thanks everyone in advance because your comments can very well take my thinking to another level and make my weaknesses into new strengths!all the best,Jason
Innerstatejt2007-4-18 15:47:9

Innerstatejt

Thanks Todd,  Yeah I think we are on the same track on the self production thing. So far this has been a profitable venture from the get go and i`d like to keep it that way. Then again I know that soemtimes a small investment is necessary to take things to  the next level. I`m considering partnering up with small record labels to have them sell my product on their sites etc. I just don`t know how to automate a system that tells me who purchased from where so I can sort out proper comissions to these labels.cheers,Jason

Innerstatejt

Thanks a ton for that! It`s the perfect option and it`s perfect timing! thanks  Does anyone have any other marketing techniques they`ve used to drive bigger sales? cheers,Jason