The next entrepreneurial wave

For the past 15 years, if an individual wanted to start their own business with a very small investment there is a very good chance that they started a vinyl sign shop.  If you had a couple thousand dollars and a little bit of technical savvy, then you could be in business in a few days. Granted you’d end up working hard and self promoting your pants off if you wanted to earn a living, but it was attainable. There is a new game in town that uses a very similar skill set and investment level.

Commercials. How much does the local car dealership spend for a pan of the lot, a closeup on a few cars, and some text over a still shot of their showroom? If they go really cheap then maybe five thousand dollars. Go watch this video that my friend Rob shot. He is an amateur photographer with a Canon 5D Mark II. He has never shot or edited any video. He spent one day reading the video portion of his camera’s instruction manual and the tutorials for final cut express and then most of a day shooting and editing this video. Less than five thousand dollars and two days effort gets you some nice video suitable for HD TV. Canon has announced the Rebel T2i which is capable of almost as high quality video for only $899.

You can go hit Google now and find someone to sell you a cheap commercial. It will be crap. In the next year or two your next door neighbor will be shooting ad spots that will be better quality than anything showing on deep cable today for a price that even a vinyl sign maker can afford. Add to that the current explosion of outlets for video ads and he will probably be making money doing it too.