"The Infomercial Goldmine”
"How To
Make And Keep Millions
In TV Commercials"
by
Mark Olson, President
Totally Direct Television, LLC
Copyright 2009, held by Mark Olson
"Smashwords Edition
What people are saying about "The Infomercial Goldmine"
"The Infomercial Goldmine" is a MUST-READ for every actor, director, producer & wannabe in the business. Why re-invent the wheel when Mark already did it for you? This is a six star read in a five star world!
Squire Fridell
Author:
ACTING IN TELEVISION COMMERCIALS
Random House, 4th Edition released March, 2009
“Mark has incredible experience and a wonderful grasp of how the infomercial drives our entire business. He really knows what he's talking about. He loves what he does and he's a joy to work with and without his help and guidance, it might have taken us years of hit and miss to get where we are today, instead we hit the bulls-eye on our first try. Thank you Mark.“
-- J. Appel, Former President, Orange Glo International and Oxi Clean
"The Infomercial Goldmine” by Mark Olson is a must read for anyone contemplating or doing business in Direct Response TV. This fast and informative read is full of valuable advice and insight into marketing on television. Anyone serious about successfully selling on TV should make this book a required first step.
In business school we always learned to follow the data and in the business of DRTV, the successful numbers lead to Mark Olson. His word on the subject is gospel and now he shares his expertise chapter and verse for everyone ready to listen and benefit.
Jim Karpeichik
Ocean State Video
An absolutely fantastic book! Mark gives you an inside honest look at this industry. I love his style…no nonsense and to the point with tons of insider information that I don’t think you can get anywhere. I would not do a thing with an idea that I have, without completely devouring this book first. This book, quite frankly, could save your financial life.
Dave Emmons, President
Vermont Nature Creations
This was very fun for me to read as Mark and I and two others were partners in the infomercial world and worked together for 6 years. On a personal level, not only is Mark very creative, funny and talented, what he outlines in this book is certifiably true. So many people watching TV think "Gee I bet I could make a MILLION $$, maybe even a TRILLION, on TV selling ____; if only I knew where to start!" Well, that would be right here, with reading this book. It's a high risk industry; millions of $$ have been lost. But millions of $$ have been made, too; and it might be YOU! Good luck; have fun!
Linda Buzzalini
Durango, Colorado
Acknowledgements:
It’s been a wonderful 20+ years in this business and there are several people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude.
First, my most profound thanks to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of the Transcendental Meditation Movement. Starting in 1973, I began taking that twice daily dip into absolute silence and every time I dive in, I come out with renewed energy and a fresh point-of-view on everything. Maharishi’s inspiration to renew this ancient practice has made everything else possible.
Thanks to my great friends Squire Fridell and Rodney Benn. Squire gave me my start as an actor in LA and Rodney opened the door into television production, and later, along with Mike Clark, became my first partner in this business.
To John Prechtel for holding my feet to the fire as I learned editing. To Tim Hawthorne from whom I got my first real shot at writing, directing and producing infomercials and with whom I enjoyed much success.
Thanks to my good friends Joel and Max Appel and to Allan Millman who have always been believers in my abilities. To Paul Monea Sr. and Paul Monea Jr., friends, fans of my work and a great source of support and inspiration for years.
And to my longtime friend John Kremer at www.bookmarket.com and to the great folks at www.Smashwords.com love you guys!
Mark Olson
March, 2009
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Introduction
Chapter 2 Following One DRTV Sale
Chapter 3 Your product, Do You Have The Goldmine or Just The Shaft?
Chapter 4 I Can Do This Myself, maybe?
Chapter 5 Maybe I Do Need Help, The Deals Out There
Chapter 6 Step-by-Step,Bringing Your Product to the Public
Chapter 7 The Front End Sale
Chapter 8 The Back End Sale
Chapter 9 Finding the Real Deal: The Producer, or The Impostor
Chapter 10 The Contract
Where The Rubber Meets the Road
Chapter 11 Fulfillment
Chapter 12 Banking & Merchant Accounts
Chapter 13 The Lead Generator
Chapter 14 How Well Is Your Product Selling?
Chapter 15 Retail, The Big Kahuna
Chapter 16 Always One Option
Chapter 17 A Few Referrals
Stories From The Trenches
Glossary of Terms
Chapter 1
Introduction
This book is about possibilities and it’s about excitement. It’s about the fastest, simplest and the most exciting way I know of to achieve the American dream.
This is not a long book. It's short and to the point. I've tried to leave the stories out of the front and instead have a section at the end called "Stories From The Trenches", if you feel like getting behind the scenes a bit.
This is an easy, step-by-step guide to creating your piece of that dream, no matter how down on your luck you feel, no matter how bad the prevailing financial conditions around you are at the time….no matter what.
This book is about infomercials, but before you decide infomercials are not for you, read on just a bit. First off, to be perfectly clear, we’re going to talk about Direct Response TV commercials, or DRTV. The infomercial, which always refers to a half-hour long commercial is one version of DRTV. The other version is the “spot”, a DRTV commercial that is 30, 60, 90 or 120 seconds long and like the infomercial it also gives you the opportunity to order the product either by calling the 800 number, or going to the website.
This is an unbelievable business to be in. I love it. I’ve been creating Infomercials, or Direct Response TV (DRTV) commercials for over 20 years now...and it’s managed to hold my interest for all this time. In fact, the longer I’m involved with this business, the more fascinating it becomes to me.
DRTV can be the culmination of all your thinking, planning, labor, sweat and trials. It can be your pay-off, your time to shine, your place in the sun, not only for you, but if you do it right, for your family and your children and your children’s children.
MYTH #1 YOU NEED MILLIONS TO GET INTO DRTV
This is just not true. There are so many ways to get involved in DRTV; it’s just that no one has ever bothered to really share all the avenues into this business, before this book. As you read on, you’ll discover that you’ll start looking around you, everywhere you go, in a new way, with an eye “opened” for the possibilities that exist and believe me, they are everywhere.
MYTH #2 YOU’VE GOT TO HAVE A PRODUCT TO GET INTO DRTV
Again, just not true….and that’s just another reason to love this business. Read on!
There are so many ways for you to make money from DRTV commercials. We are going to talk about all the primary ways, but the two biggest are:
the direct sale
and the most overlooked business in DRTV for the person without a product is the lead generator
Direct sale means you need to find, uncover, discover, or invent a product to sell. Probably the best example I can cite is Orange Glo International, with it’s flagship product Oxi Clean. I wrote, directed, produced and edited 3 infomercials for them starting in 1996. When I first met the owners of Orange Glo International, they were selling Orange Glo and Oxi Clean at Home Shows, state fairs and places like the Denver Stock Show. Starting with two infomercials (the first ran for over 3 years) followed by an enormously successful 2 minute spot, Orange Glo and Oxi Clean hit the big time. The family grew the business, managed it well and in 2006, they sold the company for a huge amount of cash! Any questions as to why this is a great business?
A lead generator is a commercial that asks people to call for more information. The beauty of the lead generator is that there are products, that already exist, that are everywhere that would be great as lead gen DRTV commercials and once you understand what to look for, you can start scouting around on your own.
So, no matter what this book is about products. This could be about a product you saw somewhere that caused a light to go off in your head, with a voice that screams: “Wow, this would be wonderful on one of those TV infomercials I see all the time.”
Now, if you don’t have a product, please read on because in my 20+ years in this business, there’s one thing I know and that is there will never be an end to great products, or an end to great ideas.
So just open your mind to the possibility of creating, or discovering the next Oxi-Clean, or the next TaeBo exercise DVD. You know that old saying: “Be careful what you wish for?” well this is a good one to wish for, believe me.
THE REASON FOR THIS BOOK
My motivation to write this started with disgust. In fact, here’s the first things I sat down and wrote, way back, before I realized I had a much bigger mission than just “venting” my frustration.
September 2004
This is a self-help book. I hate self-help books. Tell you what, let’s not call it that, because in the infomercial business you can only help yourself so much and then you’ve got to have help. So, this is really a “learn-for-yourself-and-then-discover-when-and-how-to-find-good-help” book. That’s much better.
I’m writing this because about 6 months ago, I got a call from a guy. He was referred to me through a mutual friend. He’s a partner in a marketing company and they’d raised about $2.5 million to bring a product to market and they wanted do it with an infomercial. Sounds good so far doesn’t it?
Now don’t get me wrong, I love the sound of 2.5 million dollars, because it tells me, on one hand, here’s a person with the money to really do a project properly. On the other hand, I’m very nervous because in all my experience, when a group has plenty of funding, they often come at a project with the idea that just throwing enough money at it will insure it’s success and as you’ll see, there’s nothing farther from the truth.
It’s like the old joke about the guy who, when asked how he grew to a net worth of 5 million dollars, replied:
“I did it the hard way, I started with 100 million.”
Also, I've seen it over and over again how fast money disappears when you start making inquiries to any television production company about doing an infomercial. Especially when you tell them you’ve got 2.5 million dollars to do your program with!
So, this guy wants to talk about an infomercial project. Fine by me. At the time I was working with the infomercial company that introduced TaeBo to the world….one of the most amazing success stories of all time in the infomercial business....(see “Stories From the Trenches”). I spent some time on the phone with him and suggested he come down, see the place, so forth and so on.
So, he comes down. We coffee, chat, do the tour. At the time I was getting ready to test a different offer for the Alexis Vogel Cosmetics infomercial I had produced and so he got to see our editing facility in action, which is always impressive.
Please take note here: any production company can charm any new person who doesn’t have a background in television production. All those tv screens….and fancy computers! It’s like the country cousin visiting the city cousin for the first time as he looks at the skyscrapers in town and gushes: “I’ll bet you can store a lot of corn in those babies!”
Not only were our editing suites and capabilities impressive, but the Alexis Vogel program itself was also very impressive. It’s a gorgeous show, entertaining, involving….and it works. Even the guys who watch it tell me they want to order. In fact, we get a lot of letters and catalog requests from all male prisons…don’t ask…I don’t’ know.
So, he left, everything seemed fine, business as usual. I took a few days to put together a couple of different proposals with different levels of involvement from our company and drop it in the mail.
The most complete and involved proposal was to produce the show, from scratch, line up and handle all the telemarketing, set up a call center, arrange for all the fulfillment, banking, credit cards, create and manage the website, modeling it after the Alexis Vogel website which was doing great business, and in short, do everything he needed all for a reasonable fee and a small percentage of the profits.
A few days, a week nothing. I email him, nothing. So I know he’s gone elsewhere, which normally is no big deal, except for the fact that he was referred by a friend. I’ve made so many presentations, done so many “dog-and-pony shows” that it’s just a numbers game. So I call him. Yes, in fact he’s decided to go with a production company in "a certain town out west".
And that's where the frustration starts. I guess 20 years in this business was really trying my patience. In fact, I can remember at that exact moment, wanting to scream into the phone:
“A certain town out west" ??? Somebody must be sleeping with somebody out in "a certain town out west"!! I know this from my experience because it would take some half-baked reason like somebody being involved with someone in a strange town, to convince you to do a show with some unknown production company in "a certain town out west". There are no serious players in the infomercial business in "a certain town out west.”
Of course, I didn’t say any of that, but I’ve shot in "a certain town out west".... a lot. And I know from experience there are good tv production companies in "a certain town out west", however there are NOT ANY good, experienced, successful infomercial, or DRTV producers in..(you know where).
So, I’m saying to myself, this guy is trying, he thinks he’s doing the right thing, making a hot deal, but the problem is, I know he's screwed. I just know it. So I point out to him, nicely, that I think he’s making a mistake. I also tell him, that I will be happy to do whatever I can in the way of advice, again, since he was referred by a friend and for him to feel free to call me with questions as the production goes along.
He’s impressed but I know he thinks I’m still angling for this job, but I’m not and there’s two reasons.
Reason #1
This job is already underway and I learned many years ago that it’s literally impossible to fix an infomercial that doesn't work. You can start over, but you can’t fix it if its broken and no one really seems to know why.
Reason #2
I've always believed in trying to help people out. It's just something I've always done and always try to do. Read more in "Stories From the Trenches" under Squire Fridell.
At any rate, I do follow up a couple of weeks later with a phone call and he's pleased to hear from me. He’s excited. They’re shooting testimonials in “a certain town out west”, they’ve got a big-name woman celeb and she's going to do testimonial, on camera, for this product.
I sense disaster, but bite my tongue and offer to take a look at the footage when he gets it so I can give him a second opinion, if he's interested.
Couple of weeks later, he sends me the link to view the footage and sure enough, it’s awful. It is a very, very, big-time celebrity and she loves this product, but the way her testimonial is shot is just ridiculous; terrible lighting, she’s sitting in front of big sliding glass doors, horrible contrast problems AND….this woman is wearing a horrible wig! Really nice!!
So now, I feel obligated to tell this guy, who by now I consider a friend, flat out that he is making a terrible mistake. I pry it out of him that they’re shooting this entire program, including editing, for $350,000, which is much more than what I was going to do it for, but I know, I KNOW, this program is doomed and I tell him that, in no uncertain terms. These guys shooting this are nothing but amateurs and he has bought their entire line of BS, hook-line and “stinker”.
Now, it's a couple of months later. Joe (let's call him Joe for now) wants me to see a “rough cut” of the show. (See glossary) I watch. It’s terrible. It’s got so many problems it makes my teeth hurt. You know that feeling? When you see someone’s amateurish, horrible, flogging, flaying attempt to accomplish something you have
pretty much mastered....how it makes your teeth hurt to watch? My teeth even hurt now, just describing it.
My pleading-as-a-friend advice to "Joe" at this point is to inquire as to how much they’re spending on the test. I urge him, pointedly not to spend more than $10,000 or $15,000, because to test more than that just means someone is pocketing commission dollars unnecessarily…$10,000 to $15,000 is plenty to tell if your show works or not.
I tell him not to spend more than that and to not spend any more money on setting up a warehouse, getting products labeled, arranging for shipping etc, etc. because, as the saying goes: "this dog will not hunt"…..ever.
"Joe’s" a little put off with me, but knows that I’m at least being honest and I’ve told him I am in no way interested in trying to fix or help this dead duck. I’m just hoping that at best, I can try to save "Joe's" butt, because I can see it coming when this piece of trash goes on-air for a test.
The show tests, or the date it was supposed to test comes and goes. I hear nothing. Finally, unable to take it any longer I email "Joe". He calls me back and trying to sound upbeat explains that they’re going into a re-edit of the program, which is like trying to do a heart transplant on a cadaver. It ain’t gonna work. It never does in this business. Once you put a show up on the air…what you see in results, is pretty much what you’re gonna get with that particular program. But much more on that later!
The end of the story is that "Joe" and his company spent about $600,000, which includes packaging, inventory, warehousing and setting up all the other attendant services, plus $350,000 to shoot and edit a terrible program that never even generated one, single order, not one!
And then they come to me and ask me to create a 2 minute spot to test the product, because that's all they have money for.
So, why won’t people listen? I don’t know. I think part of it is ego, part of it comes from belief in one's self and product, which I totally applaud. After all if a person has the brains, insight and intuition to either invent, or discover, a great product that meets the criteria of a successful infomercial product, then very often, they also think they’re going to be a brilliant infomercial producer.
“After all, I know my product better than anyone…and God knows I watch a lot of tv, so what can be so hard about making a friggin’ infomercial, for heaven's sake.”
or even better:
"I'll just follow the formula for an infomercial."
Hey, this is not a cake you're baking and formulas don't work for infomercials.
The other reason people don’t listen is that every single town in the U.S. with a population of more than about 25,000 people probably has some sort of small television production business going on.
Most of the time, that small production company makes 90% of their money doing wedding videos and bar mitzvahs, but, they all speak the same language…they all know words and terms like “post production and teleprompter and keno-flo’s and soft boxes and 1k and 2k lights, Avid and FCP editing systems and on and on and on.
Not only that, but lot’s of these companies will also claim to have been the person, the company that did the Taebo infomercial, or Oxi Clean, or whatever, when in fact, maybe they worked on some small portion, or segment of one of those shows, or they knew someone that knew someone that worked on that show.
The things they'll say, the representations these companies will dig up and throw at you, the uninitiated, is horrifying and people buy it. Because it usually sounds reasonable. That’s exactly what happened with the woman’s hair care product that has driven me to start this book. Salt Lake City !!!! Please!
So, here’s a rule….
RULE:
Never, never, never take any production companies word for it, that they know what they’re doing. For the most part…they’re either a bunch of "wannabes" that speak the language but can't back it up with real evidence, or they're liars, cheats and swindlers.