Anyone produce an infomercial?
 

For some reason, I've been hooked on this since I was in my early 20's. I spent money with Don Lapre, William McCorkle and I've got friends that have Carlton Sheets and some others.

I've got a good idea, exclusive content and a easy to remember domain... I just need to be guided in the right direction. Of course, my product is adult related. I'm hopeing to be on the those fuckers hocking a product for $29.95.

What are the costs for a 30minute spot? Let's say a test in a midwest market. Also, I need a drop-shipper.

:helpme

Well first, it depends on if the infomercial is on at 1am or 4am....

Also, if you need a dropshipper, contact me on ICQ 170096899, or [email protected]

Thanks

i was interested also,, one of these days i am gonna research it

I read an article in a business magazine once about making infomercials. They were interviewing a guy who runs a company that produces infomercials for people. I suggest you find one of these companies that has experience in producing infomercials.

Yea, I heard of companies that do that... gonna do a search :winkwink:

anyone got a ballpark figure on a budget for something like this?

from what Ive seen, about 12.99$ :p

icq me

Our new business manager has experience producing and doing media buys for infomercials. email him [email protected] and tell him I referred you.

Thanks :thumbsup

You're entering high risk waters. Info's require serious capitalization. Very few are profitable. The ones that are have very strong marketing money behind them.

We did a lot of television ads for our 900 programs in the 80's, including regional network buys which are outrageously expensive and cable buys. You can lose money really fast in this arena if you don't know what you are doing.

If you have an exceptional product, I'd hook up with one of the big firms, though I doubt they would touch adult. The biggest firm is Guthy-Renker out west which does about $500 mil a year.
The industry does out $2 Bil so they have a 25% market share.

Spots average $800. 30 min buys can run from $50 to $30,000 depending on the market. You should have at least a 4 to 1 margin from cost of goods to selling price.

The company that can get you the best media prices is Initiative Media which was prior Western International Media founded by Dennis Holt in LA. They went through a restructuring recently.

Typically you'll need about $25K to $50k for a media test. Don't forget to budget your call center calls, since they charge quite a bit to handle the calls, and your fulfillment process and costs.
Returns are hefty in this biz also, so expect to give a lot of refunds or face the wrath of the FTC which keeps a good eye on things going out to the masses. And production costs can be stiff also if you are going for a real professional look.

You can also do mini info's which run about 2 minutes. Those can be lucrative also.

Our best steady TV response came from our MTV spots. We'd average about 1,000 to 2,000 900 calls on our 30 second commercials. But we had several super hot non-adult 900 programs which were geared to music groups which would get about 30,000 calls per day. And we had some programs we thought would do incredible that totally bombed and we'd run spots and get almost no calls at all. So you can make a fortune or lose a fortune very quickly with the power of TV.

One of our most successful ones, but unfortunately we got a ton of parent complaints on, was for a Santa Claus line. In the commercial we programmed in the DTMF sounds and told the kids to call Santa just hold your phone to the TV speaker and you'll be magically connected to the North Pole. So the kids would hold the phone to the TV out of curiousity to see if it would work and then the touchtone sounds would beep and it would dial for them.
Yeh I know that was pretty slick. But hey it worked cause it was so different and intriging.

Here's an example how you could do the same thing for your pay-per-call numbers on a web site. This example goes to a toll free 800 number.

<a href=http://www.internetmanagementservices.com/18005551212.wav>Hold Your Phone To Your PC Speaker And Then Click Here</a>

You can create DTMF dialtone sounds easily with Sound Forge 6.

Good Luck to you and feel free to e-mail if you'd like more advice or help.

[email protected]

every weekend eddition of the USAToday has a ad in the classifieds for some infomercial person

If you're still looking...found this via google:

http://www.concept-media.com/30min.html

might/might now help but at least I tried! :)

:thumbsup

if you are serious Hawthorne Direct did a good job for a start up. They need to be watched like any vendor but they have all the contacts and can produce the show.

Gotdamn that's a fucking brilliant idea!

Never produced one, but I auditioned for Intel's PII UK campaign.

Does that count?

(Never got the spot because (a) I'm an ugly fucker and (b) the girl who was doing the duo with me could not say "PCMCIA" to save her life)

We've produced 1 infomercial and a couple 60 - 120 second spots.

For an infomercial, including air time with 200 spots you'd be looking at 120k.

for the same ammount of spots and the 60 second ad, you're looking at about 18-20k.

check out tri-com pictures they produced ours and have a very nice facility in florida.


www.tricompictures.com

I didn't realize how expensive this was gonna be. I've got some capital and I'm in the process of putting together a product, kinda like ggw... just wanna mass market it. I've sold vhs videos thru ebay and my sites, just wanna take this to the next level.

actually I failed to add that this was a partnership between us and Tricom.... SO the cost of doing it on your own would be higher. tricom is handling all of our order fullfillment as well