Know-How Exchange : Strategy

Cindy

The best way to get repeat revenue from your DVD would be to rent it out by the day, night or week. And that might suit a segment of your market, but probably not the majority of them.

If you're selling a DVD, it's usually supposed to work for whatever lifetime the purchaser expects. Certainly you'd expect a minimum of two years.

Licensing it to expire after a period (even a long period) would run counter to the intuition of most buyers. They wouldn't "get" it. I suspect your customer service line would end up swamped with calls from irate users complaining about "faulty" discs. And how could you make expiration work with current DVD players? Not everyone plays their DVDs on a computer.

I think you need a slightly different approach.

First, do you really need to give exclusive rights to one particular company? Not really - unless they are undertaking to achieve a raft of sales orders for you. In which case you would tie them up to some minimum performance requirements under the terms of a distribution rights agreement.

Second, while you might not be able to "expire" the DVD, you can do something else. You can supersede it. Each year, put out a modified program with new techniques and information. The only catch here is there are production costs associated with this - but you could have fresh new revenue streams recurring from the existing customer base.

Hope that helps.

ChrisB

Either you're selling a number of DVDs to the sponsor for them to distribute to their membership (or the rights to purchase a number of DVDs for a set price) OR you're selling the rights to the DVDs, in which case they own the DVDs (and intellectual rights) which they can sell, etc.

Yes, you can have multiple sponsors, or you can license the material non-exclusively to a number of companies.

"I invested $60,000 in this series. How do I determine my ROI?"

Cindy, in simple terms, assuming no borrowings to fund the $60k, and ignoring the time-value of revenues:

ROI =

(Sum of all revenue received-Original Investment)
Original investment

So if you earned $100k from $60k investment:

(100-60)
60

=40/60 = 66% Return on Investment.

If you borrowed to fund the initial investment and received revenues over a long period of time you need to adjust the returns according to the interest rates involved- you'll need a DCF or IRR formula which you can find in MS Excel.

Hope that helps

Chris Blackman

I rep a product that is sold under 7 different names, the only thing that changes is the name and labeling. Its the whole label, not just a corner of the package. think Sears-- they don't make the appliance, but another manufacturer produces the product for them and is sold under their name. Same with private label food products. I was just a factory that manufactures for Trader Joe, Wild Oats, Etc.

If you license, you may or may not give exclusive rights to it. Same with distribution. What licensing does is give someone the right to market your product as their own. Distributors sometimes can private label (market as their own) but usually just place in retailers. However, if you want to keep the brand consistant, and labeling consistent, then go thru distribution and sponsorship. And, you can put more than one sponsor logo on your package-- same packing.