Google AdWords and Keywords

From what I have been told, networking and cold calling are a daily/weekly task. I'm committed to going to 3 networking events every week and getting 8 new contacts in the process. I just met my target this week but next week is looking bad as I only have 2 meetings coming up. So I'll have to meet my target by cold calling/emailing.

Anyways what I'm trying to say is I think you should keep calling or follow up with emails and or do whatever you have to to actually talk to them. Don't quit at leaving voice mail messages.

What about marketing/advertising firms? Have you tried those? With your gear you can do top notch videos for them. Marketing people/artists are picky, you should enjoy working with them :-)
 
Mainstreet: your clips on revo are awesome! When I get a HD cam I'll aim for similar clips!
 
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How long were you a membert of TurnHere before you got your first gig? A year? Two? More? I'm coming up on a year with them and not one assignment yet. My semi-rural locale may be part of the problem, but I got a hint that I was in trouble during the webinar, when they mentioned that the videographers with the highest client satisfaction would get the jobs first. I realized if you didn't have a client satisfaction rating, you'd be last, and in my case, competing against hundreds of videographers in my state, dead last.

I'm holding onto the jet truck footage, and I realize it will take a while to sell. If at all. There were over 100,000 in the crowd, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one running HD cameras there.

I shoot a lot of stuff with the idea of stock footage in mind. The thing is there are many times when I'll be driving to a job and witness a spectacular sunset but don't have any place to stop and don't have a camera with me.
One Saturday last year, a friend of mine and I got the idea that we'd spend an afternoon just getting stock footage. We stopped at one private beach after another, asked if anyone would mind if we recorded some footage and that we were testing out a new camera. One by one, each of the beaches said no. We stopped at a state park, and they wanted $15 a head to get in. So we turned around and went to the next place. After hours of driving around, we came back empty-handed.

I'm curious how you managed to get emergency services workers on film/video without getting arrested. Do you have a working relationship with these folks, or was it all stealth with a long lens?

I was thinking of setting up macro photographic scenes in the studio and shooting a lot of closeup stuff for interesting background visuals.
I'm a member of RevoStock for over a year. I often look and sort by most downloaded, to see what's selling. Do they have a section where they list requested subject material--I vaguely recall one of the stock footage sites having such a request list?

There's only so much one can do with a tripod though. Sometimes a nice floating shot through a forest hiking trail makes a nice clip. For that, nothing beats a Steadicam vest and gimble. Not many of my subjects are moving! Just the changing perspective can be interesting. I've tried a few shots using my tripod, folded, as a stabilizer, but the results are still not good enough.

3,000 clips is a long way off yet, but I'll slowly work toward it.
 
I'm not sure if I want anybody shooting me at the beach... but you might have some success at the volleyball courts or folks throwing frisbees. Another thing is that you were lying to them, which is never good.

Re: emergency services, I'll read his reply but it wouldn't surprised me at all that there would be news media there shooting footage already.
 
Oh no, these were vacant lakefront boat launches, not beaches with nude folks seeking privacy! But it was private property and the folks there just didn't want strangers there. People are like that around here. Maybe if we had been driving around in a Mercedes instead of a Nissan Sentra (my friend was driving), they might have let us in.

There just aren't many networking events going on. I attended a videographer's club meeting about 60 miles from here last November with another friend who is starting up a stock footage web site, and we met the guys that did the behind the scenes footage for Extreme Home Makeover, when they did a show in CT last year, but beyond that, the only people that approached me were some folks that were asking advice on Premiere Pro. Again, brain pickers, not client potentials.

I've been trying to get ad agencies for years, but they won't give the time of day. They're just like Crews-Control, if you don't have ten years corporate experience, have won at least ten industry awards and shoot with a $50,000 camera, they won't even look at your reel. Let's face it: I'm shooting EX1/EX3, not an F23 and I'm not James Cameron. So I'm in the pool with the 60,000 other wannabes looking for 'that big break'. Add to this mix the greatest economic depression in the nation's history, and an already beleaguered startup is doomed, as it would seem. And one stubborn old fool who dreams of being a cinematographer and refuses to get a janitor job at Taco Bell.
 
Easy buddy - I shoot with a DVX and I have gotten 1 job at a medium size agency and 2 at mom and pop marketing shops.

The job that I got from the medium size was a pitch video that they wanted to do to introduce their team members to their prospective client, one of the larger banks here in Canada. I got this job because a friend of mine works at the agency.

The two smaller jobs that I got are through cold emailing, being at the right place at the right time, connections and, I guess, price bidding. Nothing glamorous, but they are starts. And for the DVX shooter with limited experience I'm happy to have made these connections.

Regardless of what gear you use there is always a market for you. Top gear shoots top quality video and mid level gear shoots mid level stuff. So really, gear doesn't get you work, word of mouth and hard work does.
 
There's a healthy helping of "it's not what you know, but WHOM you know" going on in this business, just like in politics. It's not my fault that Cricket Capucci at Crews-control won't talk to you unless you have the equipment they require and are an award-winning DOP. Even though I have handled concert shoots with unmatched professionalism, video coverage and standard-setting surround sound audio pickup, I can't get these folks to even give me the time of day.

E-mailing hasn't worked for me at all. People around here regard it as spamming and it is looked upon like a plague. I do the next worse thing, which is cold-calling, which I'm absolutely no good at. I also do mailings, lots of them. After one particularly bad round of mailings, I sent out a followup survey card, postage pre-paid. On it were a few simple check box questions asking why they didn't respond. 'Not interested' and 'we already have an in house production facility' were the two most common reasons checked.

I use excellent gear, but the quality is lost on people who view it on a 17" Daewoo TV through an RF modulator from the DVD player. There used to be a small ad agency near here, but it closed up several years ago. The rest of the businesses are Wal-Mart, Taco Bell, McD's, a couple drug chains, tire shops and gas stations. The small curio shops aren't in the market for a TV commercial, and the few that talked to me at any length wanted to see examples of TV commercials I've produced.

Unfortunately, I'm still stuck where I was in 1987, when I first tried to set up a production facility with two Newvicon cameras and an ED beta VTR. I had a day job back then, but payroll taxes and the cost of getting to/from the job were eating up much of the profits, so I couldn't afford any decent equipment back then. And Linear editing was pretty dismal. I did have a TARGA32 card in a 286 PC which a whopping 1.6 megabytes of RAM via an Intel AboveBoard card that TIPS used for the undo buffer, but it could only do still graphics with that software and I didn't have all the fancy controllers that let one do animation to tape. So I did still titles and was thankful for flying erase heads allowing me to stop/start recording to do basic cuts only editing.

By 2003, I had been almost comfortable editing DV footage from my TRV900 and VX2000 camcorders, and began doing cultural dance events as a volunteer for several years. After 4-5 years of donating my time to the group, I finally got ONE wedding shoot out of it.

Now that my daughter is five years old and beginning to cooperate with verbal instructions, I'm thinking of making a commercial with her speaking to the camera, making an appeal that clients should choose us because the little girl speaking wants to have a bright future. There was a CT senator who used her child to do a campaign ad and the voters bought into it and voted her in. I had lunch with some friends and we discussed a plan. I asked my daughter if she would do it and she said she would. Everyone thought it was a good idea.
 
People and agencies use videographers for all kinds of reasons - some scenarios I have never even thought of before. So it's not a bad idea to get on their radar anyways and see what jobs they need you to do.

It does sucks to live in a smaller town that's got nothing but multi-nationals, big boxes or mom's and pop's shops, none belongs to your market. I honestly think that you would have a lot more success if you were to move to a metropolitan city like Chicago or NY. If I can make a living there I would love to live in NYC.

I don't expect emailing to 'work' for me either. I use it to make sure that my prospects remember me so when the day comes they need a video done they know where to find me. It's not who I know, it's WHO KNOWS ME.

A little girl is a good idea, don't beg though.

Also back to your earlier post - don't go to a videographer's meeting. Go to where your clients are: advertisers, marketers, event planners, local manufacturers, athletes, artists, lawyers, real estates agents etc.
 
I could never afford to live in NY or even Westchester, if I wanted to. But I don't like those areas and I hate traveling to or through them with all the traffic, pollution and criminals. I used to work in Westchester for a group of radio stations. The commute was often 2 hours and many of the people I worked with were.. how can I say this nicely? "Smooth operators."

A friend of mine told me that convincing ad agencies to do cable TV is an arduous if impossible task, especially if I'm not a good salesman and that I should work for someone else. The issue I have with this is that I march to the beat of a different drummer, and I never was a good employee at every job I held 30+ years ago, when I was employed in various careers. I was too slow, or the work was uninteresting, the routine became a grind and I started arriving late for work, etc. The stress landed me in the hospital with an ulcer and hypertention.

After 1985, I decided to work for myself. I've been much happier, my ulcer healed and I no longer have hypertention. However, the stress now comes from not earning enough to pay the property taxes on my home. Living with a sense of impending doom, while growing older and more tired every year, is not a good feeling either. Lacking formal education (I came from a dirt poor family) I went to work instead of college, to support my family, who were ill and hospitalized much of the time. So it was one dead end job after another, a lot of frustration for decades. So it's not like I can go get a decent job as a paralegal and make $35K.

At least now I am in the career field that I enjoy, and when I do have work, it's the most fulfilling existence I ever had. The shame is it took me fifty years to finally land in the field that is right for me. That misfortune is that the economic situation has all but decimated this field. But I stubbornly stick to it. I'm not giving up, like I did with desktop publishing 18 years ago.
 
To answer your questions - I was a member of Turnhere for several months before I got a job. Your best chance of getting a shot are- 1) a videographer cancels or botches the job, or 2) they happen to have a job in your town and you are the only guy there. Then you will suddenly hear from them and get your shot. Once you prove yourself, you will get called regularly - but only if the business is there. Right now, it's not. I'm lucky to get something once a month.

As far as the ER guys, I never thought twice about shooting them, just set up out of their way (across the street) and started shooting. Most ER workers will A) have their hands full with what they are doing and B) assume you are news crew. I always shoot with an angle or distance that makes them unrecognizable. Last time I checked it was legal to shoot what you want on a public street anyway. So much filming goes on in this area that no one looks twice, and this is an affluant area. THe only time I got accosted was by security when shooting a mall parking lot timelapse, and at a business park that was the best place to shoot interstate traffic. That guard decided I was OK and let me finish the shot, while telling me about some great nearby spots to get groups of deer.

Anyway, if it is tough to shoot in your area, the closeups inside sounds like a good idea.
 
Thanks for the info on TurnHere. A few months.. I'm coming up on a year now, so I guess they don't have any jobs in my area, or they're so few and far between that there aren't enough chances for someone else to no-show and roll the job over to me. There may be a dozen 'next in line' folks ahead of me, in which case my odds of seeing work within my lifetime are about nil.

It varies by area, but in some places, you can't film within two miles of infrastructure without getting hauled in for a 4-hour questioning session. One time I and two friends were taking a train north out of NYC and I was ready to get some nice footage by pointing my camera at the window with the intent of recording the passing scenery. I nearly got arrested by MTA cops over that one! What stupid laws in these urban areas.

I stick to air shows and antique auto events in town mostly. So the experimental macro imagery is an untapped area that I hope to make into something saleable as footage.
 
TurnHere... the competition.

Fortunately, everyone I know, a lot of potential clients we've spoken to, are not impressed with TurnHere and for the most part they're not hiring very professional videographers at all. You don't get high level professionals for what they pay, which is peanuts. They are basically the McDonalds of the industry and we're aiming to be more of a middle-of-the-road option with some cheaper packages and some more luxurious ones, but not outrageous prices like a New York luxury restaurant or something, haha.
 
I know that TurnHere is low-paying, but just to have SOME regular income would help. After all, what do I say to the Tax Collector, who wants money REGARDLESS of whether I have it or not? It's funny how they get to demand I pay for their services, but I don't get to demand others pay me for my services. But back to point, TH is a poor man's Crews-control--an aggregator of video jobs. The model probably works okay in dense, urban areas, but not out here. I may as well be in Montana as far as they're concerned.

Well Google sent me a "WTF??" e-mail today:

"Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. After reviewing your account, we've found that one or more of your ads or keywords doesn't meet our guidelines.
You can use the "Status" column on the "Ads" tab of your account to check the status of your ads. To view all disapproved ads in your account at once, follow these steps:"

So now it looks like because of the lack of click throughs, they think my ad is ineligable to be on Google. Sheesh... will miracles never cease?

What IS interesting is that all this past month, the ONLY inquiries I've received from my web site were job applications and resumes! No one is hiring me, but plenty of people are asking to be hired BY me!
 
Well today Google killed my ad. "Disapproved". Sheesh.. how can one advertise a business if Google is going to henpeck the ads based on clicks? It's not my fault that no one is interested in videography. If I could only get through to a live person on Google, I'd tear them a new one..

chart
 
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Basspig-


I once had an idea of shooting antique cars with a Glidecam, putting together a short video with music and pitching it to the owners (using a sample on a portable DVD player) , who generally are sitting next to the car bored for 8 hours and obviously spend every last cent on their cars (I know , I was once one of them). So I went to a car show and shot a few (link at bottom). Maybe you can take this idea and run with it.

As far as Turnhere goes, I've enjoyed shooting for them, mainly because they are not the same annoying style typically used for cable spots, and like to get creative with it, low pay or not. Here is one of my favorites:

http://www.yellowpages.com/info-12816903/Aqueduct-Irrigation/?auto_play=true&lid=157837327



http://www.revostock.com/SearchResu...amVersion=&Sound=&HasPlugins=&HasModelRelease=
 
Around here, the richest state in the union, nobody has any money, or so they say. Like the lady who recently didn't want to pay my reasonable price for shooting a multi-location event, yet bragged about her brand-new Mercedes S550 that she'd taken delivery of the day before. There's a kind of skewed priority here.

I was joking with a friend of mine during a phone conversation yesterday, that if I could relate non-use of my videography services to global warming, convincing people that using my services would save the planet, I might have some regular business. :)

Realistically, there's no way I can sensibly use one of the five advertizing appeals, the Fear appeal, to make people reprioritize videography. They'll hire a photographer at a wedding and pay them $4,000, but they won't hire me and pay me $1,500, despite the fact that I'm dealing with temporal images, sequence and order, audio and music and have to produce a nice physical DVD package to go along with it. The photographer gets a lot more money and respect and only has to bring up a few images, pick a few favorites, maybe a few filters to make a certain look and print the winners and insert in an album. A few hours work. Whereas for me, a week of full days pulling that wedding video together with multiple camera angles.

Videographers just aren't granted the value that other vocations enjoy. Doctors, lawyers, electricians, carpenters, civil engineers.. most earn six figures around here.

I really can't see a car show video walk through being of interest to any of these buyers.
Heck, let me tell you a story about an antique air show... there was a P51 Mustang taking people up for a 1 hour flight for $4,000. One retired fellow paid this fee and his daughter was going to photograph it. But he approached me and asked if I would record video, because his daughter discovered the battery on her camera was dead and couldn't take the photos. So I told him I could film it and put it on DVD and make some 8x10 prints too, for about $250. He balked at the price and we didn't strike a deal. So he spent 4 grand to take a ride on an airplane, but he won't spend $250 to preserve the memory. Well good riddance!

That was a really nicely done ad for the lawn irrigation folks. You had a really interested and enthusiastic customer there, too, which makes it ring genuine. Great job!
 
I have never even attempted to persuade anybody to use video. My marketing strategy has always been "if you need a video, call me." not "you should use a video".

In your P51 case, you have to understand that the retired guy was not prepared to spend any money at all on this as his daughter was supposed to photograph it for free. From his POV, it is another $250 that he was not supposed to spend. Otherwise, $250 is a perfectly reasonable price for what you were prepared to offer him. In fact, it is actually a little low. Next time there is an air show in town, what you should do is partner up with the air show in advance to set up your service. See if you can advertise your video service simply as an add-on to their base flight service. A bet a lot of people who already spent $4000 on the flight would be more than willing to spend another $250 to have their experience video recorded.

Heck I would do it if I'm not afraid of flying! LOL!
 
Generally, that's been my strategy, up to now. But it hasn't been working. I'm too nice, too honest, not a shyster. It seems the shysters, busybodies and socialites seem to make out pretty well in this business. It IS a dog eat dog business.

Understood about the P51 thing.. but similar situations where someone can afford a $180K Mercedes car, but won't pay me $1100 to do an all-day multiple location shoot plus extensive editing, and the countless wedding couples whom I've spoken with, handed my price list to and never heard from again.. well that's another situation.

That's an interesting idea about partnering up with the air show. It's a small airport and when I contacted them about permission to bring a video camera onto the tarmac, they seemed unfriendly and uninterested in helping me with my question. But it won't hurt to ask if I can set up a kiosk or something next to their ticket counter. And I paid to get in last two times I was there!

I really need Ralph Harrison as my salesman!
 
Yeah I think it is a dog eat dog business. i don't like my competitors, not full service upscale studios that I can't and don't compete with but other freelancers like myself. I go to tons of meetups to network with other small business owners and I do what I can to discourage other videographers from going to the same ones as I do.

Where is the closest metropolis from where you live?
 
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