Bright Technologies will help to plan and implement an IT infrastructure that will better support the following business requirements for SMG:

1. Dispersed Geographical Coverage Must Not Impede Efficient Operations:
Management and employees are located in several states. Multiple locations and hubs in multiple cities and states will need full access to shared business services.

2. Easy Communications Access is Needed While Traveling:
Employees will need access to business services while away from their home office (fax, email, documents, customer records, ability to handle customer requests, etc.).

3. Additional Services Required from the IT Department Need to be Implemented on a Timely Basis:
For example, new business offerings will need to be quickly supported by a flexible IT infrastructure.

4. Technological Scalability is a Must:
To allow for cost-effective rapid growth, a non-traditional model for IT technology will be required.

Art McCauley, President of Security Marketing Group, said, “We have selected Bright Technologies to steer our IT planning because of their unique focus on strategic IT solutions that will help us to be more efficient over the long run. They have a driving approach to solving our particular business needs that you don’t come across every day.”

If you handle your own advertising correspondence, work with layout artists and write your own ads, it’s well worth your while to set up your own in-house ad agency and save a ton of money.

Even if you don’t create your own ads, you can profit from setting up your own agency and placing the ads that bring sales directly to you.

If you have somethings to sell – especially by mail order – advertising is they way to make that product reach people. Although advertising agencies produce excellent ads of all types and sizes with every demographic appeal, they also charge for it. That’s why they’re ready to claim the fifteen percent discount usually granted for placing ads.

You can learn how to create and design your own ads – with no background in copywriting or art. And, you can set up your own ad agency to place these ads where THEY’LL MAKE MONEY FOR YOU.

Do you have a product that you’re ready to sell? Now’s the time to find out the best angles to use and the tricks of the trade to putting money in your pocket.

STARTING YOUR BUSINESS

Do you have a mail order business? Maybe you sell clothing, camping supplies, or information through ads to the mail order trade. Perhaps you’ve run classified ads for years and are ready to branck out into larger display ads.

Not only small home businesses, but larger mail order companies and hundreds of major advertisers everywhere set up their own in-house agencies to produce and place ads. Even magazines create in-house departments under another name to get the agency discount.

What might set advertising agencies apart from homemade operations is the appearance of the letterhead and the ad form. They must look sharp and professional.

Start with a name for the ad agency you want to establish. It can be anything, but must be different from the name of the company that will be using the space. Then register the name with the county clerk. Check first to be sure you’re not using a company name already in business.

Desiging letterhead is easier than you think. You don’t have to create an elaborate or clever logo – the initials of the company will do. You can choose the mark – the special type style – at a printers, or use one of dozens of press-on letter styles available at art supply stores.

Using photo offset, digital camera, an instant printer can run off a thousand sheets at a very low price. If you go to a printer, check and compare the total printing costs. Typesetting can be expensive and there’s a minimum charge. You may want to wait to get all your typesetting and printing done at the same time – letterhead, ad form, ad copy and any sales literature you may be preparing. Investigate ways to get by with the lease expense.

Establishing your own ad agency is so easy that the most important part is the form you send in when you place ads. Although there are no federal restrictions for in-house ad agencies, some publications may quibble. If your form looks as good as the rest, you’ll have no problems.

The following page is a representation of a sample ad order form. Just copy this form and have your company design or logo printed on top. You can choose a color paper to have the forms run off on – they’ll be more noticeable. Then all you do is send in a copy of the ocmpleted form with your check and final artwork for your ad – and claim a big discount for being your own agency.

Address

To the publisher of: __________________________________________________

Organization______________________________________________________

Your name_______________________________________________________

Address__________________________________________________________

City__________________________________State________Zip____________

Phone (____)_________________

Please mark your desired ad size in a box below:

q 1/3 page $30 (5.5” x 2.75”)

q 1/2 page $45 (5.5” x 4.25”)

These are growing in popularity. They usually consist of short scenes of

important high school events, such as sports, clubs, candid “people scenes,”

still photo montages, and other memorable items for the students. A well-

edited hour-long video, dvd should be able to be sold for $35 to $80, depending

upon the editing complexity of the video and the size of the school.

The larger the school, the more you can expect to sell. You should first

contact the school administration with this idea. Put together a good

presentation for them, explaining your services and how your video yearbook

will work with the regular yearbook as an added remembrance. A good idea

is to offer to donate a portion, $2 for example, per tape sold to a school

fund or student-supported charity. After the administration, you will

probably need to speak to the school board, principals, and school yearbook

sponsors. This work will be worth it, though.

Try to include in your tape, from time to time, current events or subjects

which will remind the viewers about what was going on at the time they were

in school. One caution, though. Be careful about including copyrighted

items, such as popular songs, in your tape. You will need to get permission

from the copyright holders or risk legal action.

The best way to sell your dvd is to obtain permission to distribute a flyer to the

students in the school at the same time as the regular yearbook information is distributed.

Then, follow up later in the year, giving those who haven’t ordered yet another opportunity. Finally, give another chance at the end of the school year.

From time to time, go to the school and shoot material. Get sporting events,

clubs, quiz bowl tournaments, science fairs, special events, pep rallies,

ordinary day-to-day video, dvd and, of course, graduation. If you’re ambitious,

do a video yearbook for each class! That way, students can end their high

school years with a four-hd-dvd set, documenting that time of their lives from

start to finish!

DUBBING AND DUPLICATING

Here’s an easy service to offer. With a film-to-video transfer device,

commonly available for under $100, if you got VHS and a audio-video projector, you can put

customer’s old home movies on DVDs. There are a few different types

of transfer devices available. The best place to check would be your local

quality camera shop.

You should be able to charge around $20 per hour of film for this service.

A good idea is to add background music to the home movies. Copyright-free

music is widely available on CD. Check advertising and marketing magazines

such as Advertising Age for ads.

You can also offer a duplicating service for customer’s home videos, so

they can give relatives (or America’s Funniest Home Videos) a copy. You

can usually charge a flat fee for this service, depending upon the length of

the tape. Editing together still photos is also a good service to offer,

particularly to people who travel frequently.

There are many other areas just starting to be tapped _ video  on dvd resumes,

video postcards, even video wills. If you come up with a good original idea,

research the market for it. If you find a reasonable amount of people will

be interested in your new service, you may just have a winner on your hands!

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your newspaper. What do you see EVERY day? Coupons. It seems like coupons

multiply like rabbits. Why? Prices are rising, unlike a majority of

people’s incomes.

Coupons only make good financial sense. But what if you discovered that

someone’s making money from coupons? They are, and so can you, by selling

a special type of coupon.

Manufacturers use coupons primarily to attract new customers. The money

savings entice people to try products they might otherwise not have. The

same can be true of  local businesses in your area. Sure, they put coupons

in their newspaper ads.

But you can give them the opportunity to get their coupons into the hands of the

exact customers they need, and at a far better price than the local newspaper.

You can produce a Local Business Coupon Book easily, inexpensively, and profitably, i

f you follow the steps outlined here.

The first step in running a successful coupon publishing business is to

find the businesses that will advertise with you. Any business that relies

on local advertising is a good prospect.

Here is a short list of businesses you should consider:

Theaters;

Hair Salons;

Fast Food Restaurants;

Record

and CD Stores;

Dry Cleaners;

Supermarkets;

Car Washes;

Muffler Shops;

Ice Cream and Frozen Yogurt Shops.

Basically, any store that could reasonably use a coupon to draw in new customers is a prospect.

You may want to specialize in one area, such as fast food restaurants. Or, cover the whole gamut. Look through your phone book for businesses you might not have

thought of.

When you approach these businesses, target a group within a five mile

radius. It will be more time-efficient for you, and you can use the area

grouping in your sales pitch. Stress the fact that around 80 percent of

their business will come from that five mile radius. Tell them that you

plan to distribute the coupon book within that radius, so it will draw the

best results.

To be really profitable, you should get at least 15 – 25 businesses in the

book. The more, the better.

How much to charge? That depends on how many books you will be distributing, and what your costs are. One coupon book producer charged $100 for a coupon going to 1,000 people in an eight mile radius. His total cost was $300, and he sold 11 businesses coupons. This gave him an $800 profit in one week!

The second step is to create the coupons. If you have a computer, the job

of designing the coupons can be quite easy with some of the word processor/

graphics packages available. If not, talk to your printer. He or she will

more than likely have some ready-made templates for coupons. You can just

fill in the blanks.

Be sure to put YOUR business name on the coupon (in small print, so it

doesn’t distract). Subconsciously, people will remember your business name

and associate it with saving money. In any case, you will need to put the

advertising business’ name, address, phone, logo (if any, many businesses

will have them ready made for you to use), the amount of the discount, any

conditions they may have, and an expiration date. Your printer can help you

with the layout, if you are inexperienced, or you can find easy to use

layout boards at an office supply or art store.

Assembling the coupon books can be done in a number of ways. The easiest,

and recommended, way to start is by simply stapling them together. Only

one staple will be necessary, on the left side of the stack of coupons.

Make a cover coupon with your business name and the name you’ve chosen for

the coupon book. Put that on top of the stack before you staple. Other

methods are perforating/padding, and perforating/perfect binding. Your

printer should be able to provide pricing information on these and other

binding methods.

The third step is distributing. You have already identified the radius

within which you will distribute your coupon books. There are two methods

of delivery you can use. You can either deliver them by car or foot, or

you can bulk mail them.

Bulk mailing is infinitely easier and more efficient, but requires a bit of

paperwork and registration fees. If you are delivering in one zip code

area, you can use either five digit presort mailing, or carrier route

presort mailing.

You should check with your postmaster regarding rules and fees. As soon as

you have mailed the coupons, deliver a copy of the coupon book to each

business that has advertised in it, so they know that customers will now

be bringing them in.

The fourth and final step is follow up. You need to know how your coupon

books are doing. Ask the businesses that advertise in your book to write

the amount purchased by the coupon-bearing customer on the back of the

coupon, and to hold them for you.

Stop by at least once a week and pick up the redeemed coupons. Besides

giving you purchase totals that you can refer to in future sales to new

customers, this also gives you a chance to talk to the businesses about

purchasing coupons in new books. You can show them right then and there

the results they have gotten, and they should be enthusiastic about signing

back on.

It is important to maintain a good relationship with the businesses who

advertise with you. Show them that you are committed to helping them

increase their business. If you care, so will they. This is a fun

business that can be started part-time, and can easily move to full-time.

Remember the man who cleared $800 his first week in this business. He was

just starting out, and you can do that, too!

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Now is the ideal time to get started with your own Video Taping Service. Purchasing and learning how to operate, as well as maintain the necessary equipment is easy. The technological improvements built into the equipment, and the operating pro-

cedures have been so simplified that almost anyone with the ability to read, can study a video instruction manual for a couple of hours and immediately produce professional quality, highly marketable video tapes. Without a doubt, video tape technology has replaced Super 8 home movies as the most-desired memory-saving system.

One- and two-person video taping services around the country are reporting gross earnings of $50,000 to $100,000 per year. One operation we looked into, reported an in come figure of $800,000 during the preceding 12-month period. They were accepting taping jobs from all quarters and keeping 4-hired teams busy.

Marketing imagination, organization, and attention to detail are the keys to success in operating this business. Ideas and requests for new things or events to tape and pre serve for later playback/viewing, are coming in faster than one can list. Then, there are so many things to remember and minor details to take care of, that the only way to operate successfully is with a series of checklists… for the person selling the service as well as the man or woman on the recording camera.

But don’t let mentioning of details to remember, scare you off. On the contrary, you’ll find video equipment easy and inexpensive to practice on, especially when compared to attaining a comparable degree of expertise with film. You can use the same tape over and over again, and this is definitely a business where the phrase “practice leads to perfection,” applies without qualifications or reservations.

To start a video taping service, you’ll need a video “porta-pack” recorder, and at least a half dozen tapes or sd mmc cards Check around in your area. Start by “reading up” on all the available equipment used for video taping. A trip to your public library and a few hours browsing through the periodicals on video equipment should give you added interest and a basic indoctrination. Next, check out the suppliers listed in the Garner NC City Guide online  directory. A few phone calls to those places listed, plus a few in-personal visits, should supply you with enough catalogs and “idea material” to keep you plenty busy for a week or more. These elementary learning steps are necessary as the foundation of your

business.

You should be able to buy a good quality video Cam recorder for about $350, with blank tapes for $20 or less and SD Cards from $15 to $80.   When you buy, always dicker with the dealer – explaining to him that you’re in the process of establishing a video taping service, and

if he will include a supply of tapes with the recorder, or at least give you an especially good price on them, you’ll probably buy all your tapes from him. It may not be your regular way of buying things, but when you’re starting a business, every dollar counts, so always shop around for the best prices.

Once you have your video recorder, take it home and start practicing with it. Think of yourself as being on a job for a homeowner or an insurance company, taking a photographic inventory of the house and/or the occupant’s possessions. Practice by

making a tape record of your own household furnishings. Make a tape, then play it back and critique your work. Then do it again, and again, until you have a tape you can use in sales presentations to homeowners and insurance companies. Video tape recordings of this kind are becoming extremely popular with homeowners and insurance companies alike.

Then, look through your weekend newspaper and make a note of the girls announcing wedding dates. Open your telephone directory and call these girls on the phone. Ask them if they’d mind if you came to their wedding and made a video tape of it, without any obligation to them of course.

So you go to the wedding, introduce yourself and practice making a video tape of the wedding ceremony. Take the tape home and critique it. Keep this up until you have a tape you’re reasonably proud of, and then call the bride. Ask to come over and let her see the tape. Explain to her that you’re just getting started in the business, and you simply want her comments and suggestions. Chances are, when she sees the tape, she’ll want to

buy it.

While you’re in this learning phase of your new business, visit an apartment building and arrange with the manager to make a video tape of her showing the apartment to you as a potential renter. Contact a couple of property management and real estate firms, and do the same thing with condominiums and houses for sale.

You might want to listen in on the police radio frequency, and make tapes of auto accidents, particularly those involving injuries. Another idea might be the taping of golfers practicing at the local driving ranges. Other ideas include any kind of sports practice session, birthday parties, special anniversaries, baptisms, bar mitzvah’s, publicity stories, sales presentations, and “fireside chats” by company presidents or general managers.

These are just a few idea suggestions you might want to pursue. You may find a certain kind of video taping assignment especially enjoyable and want to specialize in that area. Or you may want to leave the door open for any kind of assignment and handle each as the opportunity presents itself.

Whatever you decide, there are a few “sure success” points to keep in mind as you begin to sell your services. Remember, the idea of having a video Cam corder  in one’s home, is gaining in popularity every day. There are already some 8-million video Cam recorders in American Homes, with an estimated 100,000 being sold to new customers every month. Further estimates indicate that by 2008, at ]east one half of all U.S. households will own either a videocassette recorder, Digital Cam Recorder, DVD or a videodisc player. All of this means your market is growing and is expected to continue growing through the end of this decade.

Virtually everyone would like to see himself as a star in a home movie. Thus, when you show him a video tape of himself in the starring role, he’ll either buy the tape on the spot or want you to make a similar tape for him. Regardless of false modesty, everyone likes to show pictures of himself, and explain to his friends the different highlights of his or her life. With this understanding about your prospect in mind when you make a sales presentation, your closing rate should be quite close to 100 percent.

The best way to sell your services is to run a regular ad in your area newspapers. Such an ad might be similar to this one:

VIDEO TAPING SERVICES…

Whatever your idea or assignment, we can handle it for you! No job too large or too small! We’re experts at taping weddings, anniversaries, birthday parties and other special occasions. Commercial assignments also welcomed. Your satisfaction is guaranteed, so give us a call – 123-4567, right now!

When you receive calls in response to this ad, your objective will be two-fold: Find out what kind of taping job they have in mind, and set up an appointment to show them an example of the kinds of tapes you can produce for them. Show them an example of your work. Once you’ve met with them, and sown them a demonstration tape, you should have the sale in your pocket.

Never meet with a prospect in a selling situation without some sort of demonstration tape to show him. Try to match the tape you show them, as closely to their wants and needs as possible. Wedding tapes you have made for prospective wedding clients, and shots of golf practice or instruction to golfing prospects.

Besides an ad in the newspapers, online directories, online classifieds ads and the yellow pages of your telephone directory, make copies of the ad and get it up on the bulletin boards in your market area. Send news and publicity releases to all the media in your area, definitely whenever you’ve got an unusual or special kind of assignment.

Have some impressive business cards printed, and hand them out to whomever, and as often as you can. The slogan on your business card might read: Have Video Cam Recorder – Available for ANY kind of assignment – You name it and I’ll tape it…

Radio and/or television advertising will probably be more expensive than the resulting job assignments will sustain, so be very cautious when considering this type of advertising. However, it will very definitely be advantageous for you to pursue guest in

ter views on just about any kind of broadcast talk show. Talk show appearances and free write-ups about your business in your local newspapers are promotional angles to reach for at every opportunity. Always be on the lookout for promotional ideas and gimmicks that will result in area-wide publicity for your services.

The bottom line is simply this: Don’t be adverse to creating a story or set of circumstances if it results in a talk show appearance or newspaper write-up for you.

How much should you charge for your services? Basically, the going rate in most large metropolitan areas is about $5O per hour you spend on the assignment. Thus, you’re going to have to learn to estimate pretty accurately just how long each job is going to take you to produce a quality recording. It’s always a good idea to check out what other video taping services in your area, or in a comparably sized city in your neighboring states are charging. Newsletters and trade publications serving businesses of this type are available, however, we don’t know of any that have attained national prominence as of the date of this report. Check with your equipment supplier on any that he might know of…

Success with a business of this kind does not require an office set-up or any special education or training. You can start it on a part-time basis from your home, and parlay it into a full time, very high profit profession. The prestige this business will afford you is similar to that of a doctor.

Starting with a young couple’s wedding, if you follow up on each sale properly, you’ll probably end up making tapes for the birthdays of each of their children, school graduations, anniversaries, more birthdays, family histories, last wills & testaments, and into a whole new cycle with each generation.

You will need imagination, an affinity for people and selling moxie. Imagination is important because in many instances, you’ll have to suggest an idea for your taping services. Although just about everybody would like to have a taped record of some event or part of their life to pass along to future generations of their family, most will not be able to decide what to tape until you suggest something to them. You’ll also find that almost no one is aware of even half your capabilities until you make suggestions.

Taking pictures of people requires an ability to get along well with people – get them to relax, and immediately feel comfortable in your presence. You’ve got to be persuasive while exercising a great deal of tact and diplomacy. Make friends easily and quickly. Be aware of, and understanding of wants, desires and ambitions.

Actually, selling and getting along with people, are almost synonymous. Life is an on-going program of selling yourself to achieve your own wants and ambitions. Read a few good books on the art of selling, such as: HOW TO SELL YOURSELF by Steve Girard; and HOW TO SELL ANYTHING TO ANYBODY by Tom Hopkins. Remember, selling is really just a matter or recognizing someone’s needs and then satisfying those needs with a product or service.

Your customers will automatically accept it as fact, that you have the professional knowledge and equipment to fulfill their needs. All you have to do is reassure them, listen to their reasons for these needs, and in closing the sale, become a good friend to them.

And that’s it – the plan that can enable you to get started with your own Video Taping Service. By following our suggestions, and with a bit of energy as well as persistence, you should be able to begin with very little start-up investment and quickly

begin to realize the fruits of your own profitable business.

If you have any questions, or run into special problems, please feel free to call me or drop me a line. Having laid it all out for you, the rest is up to you – Your future is in your own hands…this ad, your objective will be two-fold:

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