"The Lightning Speed Internet Sales Success Course" LESSON #15 © 1997 B.S.A. / F.M. http://web.idirect.com/~bsa/index.htm _______________________________ THE TOPIC: How to become a multimedia pro in a month and charge $10,000+ for your service! THE ANSWER: Frankly, I was surprised that this made the "Top 20" list and got included in this course. We info-marketers have been "trained" to believe that the market is looking for quick and brainless ways to make unreasonable amounts of money. Well, I don't think anybody that voted for this lesson suspected for a minute that becoming a multimedia programming expert would be a minor feat. I think you pretty much know that it involves work. Here's what you'll have to do ... Get Director from Macromedia or Toolbook from Asymetrix - either will cost you about $1000 "on the street". Ask your local computer software retailer about them or visit www.macromedia.com or www.asymetrix.com. It should take you about a month to get familiar with a program like this. It's worth the effort. Also see the "Making Money With Multimedia" demo section on our first CD-Rom. The learning curve can be steep when it comes to multimedia programming. You need to learn to interact with the program's dialog boxes, you have to learn some scripting language, and you'll inevitably end up learning some things about CD-ROM burning, creating setup routines (if you want your jobs to be professional-quality), and more. You'll have to have some artistic sense (hopefully more than I do), and chances are you'll be needing a good graphics program like Paint Shop Pro (shareware) or Adobe Photoshop (definitely NOT shareware). Of course, I can't give you specifics here. The only way to do it is to buy the software and install it, and start reading the manuals and tinkering with it. I've made 2 CD-ROMs with Director ("Maximum Freedom" and "How To Get Maximum Social Security Benefits"). I also began to make one called "The Truth About Gulf War Syndrome" and stopped after realizing that no matter how much good I thought I was going to do in creating it, I could only lose money on it, so it'll have to wait. I even made a demo CD for The Peoples Network. To build a proper setup routine for your Windows CD-ROMs or floppy disks, go to http://www.shareware.com, and do a search for "setup builder" by Graham Plowman. It's what I use. One thing to keep in mind - there are tens of thousands of people who can program multimedia and are dying to get lucrative contracts - but wouldn't know how to market their ability if their lives depended on it. (For many of us, that's the case!) Marketing is the link between your talents and your market's checkbook. Say that after me: "Marketing is the link between YOUR talent and your MARKET's checkbook." Marketing your multimedia talents is MUCH more difficult than simply DEVELOPING your multimedia talents. And with that in mind it's time to read this ... _______________________________________________________ Excerpt from issue #1 of the Future Media Letter: _______________________________________________________ Your Very Own MultiMedia CD-Rom For $50 ?! The multimedia industry is fiercely competitive. I know of at least 5 people besides me (and my brother ... and his friend) who can create multimedia CD-Roms combining existing video, audio, text, photographs, sound effects, clipart and backgrounds and ideas and animations. Now, my set price to create a custom made multimedia CD- Rom (for Windows only) is $10,000. In case you haven't experienced this for yourself, try calling some people on the phone and asking them to give you $10,000 for anything. Go ahead. Try some rich people, too. Same result. To say the least, people are loathe to pay $10,000 without a fight. So I needed a strategy to be handsomely paid in a competitive industry. And what I came up with was ... A Whole New Concept Of "Lead Generating" ! What I will do for someone now is take their video, audio, ascii text etc. and take a couple of days to create a very rough and incomplete idea of what I can do for them. It has to be rough and incomplete for 2 reasons: #1, because that's all you can do in a couple of days, and #2, for $50 I'm sure not going to create something that someone can duplicate and sell! No way. If they want a finished product, they've got to do better than $50. But since people are mostly either broke or say they're broke, here's what you (I) can ask for instead of cash ... - royalties on future sales - an agreement that they will immediately manufacture the CD once you've finished it, and give you 1000 or more copies of it. You can sell them, or use them as "resumes" - hand them out to people as proof of what you can do - a split on the copyright But don't come across like a loser. Compete on value, not price. If your price is $10,000, include $10,000 worth of value in your side of the equation during negotiation. If you're happy to make $3,000 and that's all you get up front, you'll be able to remain calm if you never see the other $7,000. But you'll know that you might see that other $7,000 - or at least part of it! Think of it as gravy for your potatoes. It doesn't stop at the demo, either - or even with the finished product. For God's sake get out of the "technician mentality". If someone wants a CD-Rom, their primary worry is "How the heck am I going to sell it?". I tell them about the catalogs, the wholesalers and retailers, the people who will readily fork over $1000+ for a duplication license for any reasonable-sounding CD. I let them know I will be glad to create a press release for the finished product and tell them who to mail and fax it to. I'll even tell them what company to use to duplicate it. Solve every problem, remember? Get the salivating greed glands flowing. Then give them a meal! And ... Don't Be A Technician! Be A "Consultant"! Studies show that a "consultant" can easily make more money and put customers at ease than a "salesperson" can! A "consultant" is perceived as somebody who is going to come in and solve every problem. Which is what you should do. You can see that this technique is nothing other than a little hard work to prove that you're worthy of doing business with. Glide into your customer's life like you're some kind of benevolent deity-consultant who can solve their every problem. If you don't solve EVERY problem they've got, they'll feel like they haven't been helped at all, because they're just going to have to start over from square one to find other resources to accomplish their goals. To run a business properly you'd better know all of your market's problems and desires. And be ready to deliver a solution to each one.