Make Your Own How-To DVD to Sell on eBay

One area of growing popularity on eBay lately is homemade how-to DVDs. People always want to learn new things, and some things are a lot easier to learn from a video than from a book. Some people are visual learners - they prefer to be shown how to do something rather than read it. The advantage of creating your own how-to DVD is that it’s a onetime process. After you create the video, you just have to sell copies.

Everyone has something that they can teach others. Decide on your subject matter by determining what you’re an expert in. Maybe you’re a great dancer, a skilled handyman, are good at home decorating, can make impressive desserts for parties, or know how to teach sign language . Almost anything can be turned into a how-to video.

You don’t have to create a professional DVD. Your video can be made by a film student or even a teenager with a video camera. You might even know someone who has a knack for filming and editing. Look around and you can find someone who can help you for little or no money.

After you’ve completed your DVD, it’s time to list it on eBay. It will need to be listed under information products in the Everything Else category. It’s best to list your DVD for a fixed price on Buy It Now for 30 days. You don’t need to list it as an auction. (There are benefits to 30 day listings. The page becomes “old” and gets indexed on Google. I sell a lot of items on the 28th and 29th day of a 30 day listing. Re=listing constantly every 7 days gets expensive and your item does not have time to be indexed on Google. My best selling products are listings over 2 years old where I just keep updating the quantity.)

The best thing about selling information products is that you create it once and can sell it an unlimited number of times. This is called passive income. No storage is required for info products and you can create an unlimited number of them. The majority of how-to DVDs sell for $15.99 to $39.99. Make sure you research thoroughly and price your DVD accordingly.

It’s a good idea to keep extra copies so you’re prepared for orders. That will allow you to ship your DVD quickly and save you time.

For example, this horse expert has several DVDs on horse care. Here is one listing:



And you can see from the seller's feedback that the DVDs are consistent sellers (keep in mind that only about 50% of buyers leave feedback, so this seller has probably sold twice as much as you see on the FB page):


So think about what you know that you can share with others - and make money doing it! For more information on this technique, check out Skip McGrath's ebook about how to make money with information products online.

Selling Vintage Public Domain Items on eBay

Vintage items are one of the hottest items on eBay and Etsy right now. You don't have to spend hours in thrift stores and at garage sales to find vintage items to sell. You can use items in the public domain that you can access from your computer.

So what does this mean? Anything in the Public Domain is "held by the public at large" - no permission is needed to copy or use public domain works. Public Domain information falls under these categories:

1) Anything published before 1923 when copyright laws went into effect.
2) Items whose copyrights have expired.
3) Items ineligible for copyright protection.

Your best bet is to use information from before 1923. Public Domain information can include:

1) Text, articles, stories
2) Photographs
3) Sheet music
4) Research papers
5) Drawings and illustrations
6) Laws and government documents
7) Maps
8) Newspaper and magazine articles and ads
9) House Plans
10) Craft, sewing, knitting, cross stitch, embroidery patterns

The trick is to create a VERY SPECIFIC NICHE PRODUCT using information from the Public Domain. The information is free. You might think, "Why would anyone buy something from me on eBay when they can get it for free?" Most people don't know they can get these types of vintage items for free. Also, they are paying you for your time in packaging the information for them. Much like a person would go to a bookstore and buy a book with "101 Blueberry Recipes." Sure, they could find this for free at the library or in a variety of places online, but how much of their time would it take to find it? Most people are happy to pay $20 for the finished product.

A few examples of the types of information products you can create with items from the Public Domain:

19th Century Guitar Music - Sheet Music Collection
Vintage bicycle Photographs
Vintage Doll Clothing Patterns
Early Inventions - Drawings and Plans of Mechanical Inventions
Historical Churches - Drawings and photos
Recipe Collections - 101 Ways to Cook Rhubarb

The beauty of this business model is that you can create a product once and sell it an unlimited number of times. The only storage space needed is on your computer, and you can create an infinite number of products. The only limitation is your time and imagination. If you created one product a week, you would have 52 products at the end of a year. Sell them each for $20 and you have built up a nice business with no inventory to store. Even if you only sold one of each of your 52 items a month at $20, that is $1,040 a month in passive income.

For more information on how to create these products, where to find Public Domain items, what topics sell the best, and where else you can sell them, check these resources:

How to Create an Automated eBook Business on eBay

How to Create and Sell Information Products on eBay, Amazon, and the Internet